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The United States as a Nation. 



LECTURES ON THE CENTENNIAL 



OF 



American Independence, 



GIVEN AT 



BERLIN, DRESDEN, FLORENCE, PARIS, AND LONDON. 



BY 



JOSEPH P. THOMPSON, D.D., LL.D. 







BOSTON : 
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 

(Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co.) 

1877. 



IT 






Copyright, 1877, by 

JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO. 

All Bights Reserved. 



Stereotyped and Printed by 

Rand, Avery, and Company^ 

Iiy Franklin Street^ 

Boston. 



MY FATHER. 

1792—1873. 

thou of wise and gentle life, 
Unselfish, faithful, free from guile, 
Disdaining Mammon's sordid strife ! 

1 see Thee now serenely smile 

As thine own words of patriot truth, 
Gathered in Freedom's early bloom, - 
The garnered lessons of my youth, — 
I lay, a chaplet, on thy tomb. 

July 4, 1876. 



CONTENTS. 



How this Book grew vii 

"The Day we celebrate" xiii 

The Lincoln Tower xxiii 

LECTURE I. 

GROUNDS AND MOTIVES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 

Not revolution in the European sense, but restoration, or reconstruc- 
tion of political society. Independence not sought by the Colonies, 
but forced upon them. A nation defined. The Colonies had all 
the attributes of a nation. Preliminary Congresses. Dignity and 
influence of the Revolution. Proximate causes. Unjust taxation. 
Reply to " The Westminster Review." " Stamp Act " but a sign of 
a principle, like Tetzel's sale of indulgences. The " town-meeting" 
the equivalent of the Teutonic Gemeincle. Franklin's examination 
before Parliament. Religion in America a training for liberty. 
John Robinson and his teachings. The pious yeomanry of New- 
England. Dr. Emmons. Local government. Boston "Tea-Party." 
First stand at Lexington and Concord. Battle of Bunker Hill. 
Franklin and Frederic on the Hessians. Hancock, "Washington. 
Independence declared 1 

LECTURE II. 

doctrines of the declaration of independence. 

Signers of the Declaration. Not doctrinaires. Many men of profes- 
sional training. Their work has stood. No going back to mon- 
archy. The grand syllogism of the Declaration. Principles to be 
balanced with each other. The Declaration a testimony against 
materialism. • Equality of men as the spiritual offspring of God. 
Their right to the free use of their powers, and the full enjoyment 
of happiness. Government must secure these ends. Suffrage and 
official place not natural rights. Views of Jefferson. John Stuart 
Mill. Liberty and government not ends in themselves, but means 
to a higher end. The right of revolution. The conditions that 
define and limit it. False notions of French revolutionists. Rea- 
sons why the French Revolution failed; mainly the lack of ethical 
grounds. The indictments of the Declaration against the King of 
Great Britain. The Declaration valid against new perils. . . 55 



yj CONTENTS. 



LECTURE III. 

ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION. 

Difference between the constitution of a nation and a national consti- 
tution. Laboulaye on the Constitution of the United States. The 
first government extemporized. The second a confederation of 
States. Why this failed. The plan impossible in America. Anxi- 
ety of Washington, Madison, and other patriots. Need of a strong 
government. Views of Hamilton. The breaking up of the Confed- 
eracy imminent. Shays's Rebellion. The Federal Convention of 
1787. Ability of its members. Their fidelity in their work. Wis- 
dom in dealing with slavery and confederacy. Grand results in 
harmonizing local government with supreme national authority, 
and in equalizing the States under a government by the people. 
Washington as General and President ; the typical man of his age; 
the embodiment of the American idea; contrasted with Frederic 
the Great and Napoleon. 106 

LECTURE IY. 

THE NATION TESTED BY THE VICISSITUDES OF A CENTURY. 

Its Constitution the great contribution of modern times to the science 
of government. It has survived the test of party-spirit, of section- 
alism, of foreign war, of financial crises, of territorial expansion, of 
promiscuous immigration, of threatened disintegration with civil 
Avar, and the assassination of the Head of the State. No other 
government has endured so many and so great vicissitudes with 
less of evil to itself and to society. 159 

LECTURE V. 

THE NATION JUDGED BY ITS SELF-DEVELOPMENT AND ITS 
BENEFITS TO MANKIND. 

The life of a nation not estimated by length of years, but by what the 
years have accomplished. The United States contrasted witli lUis- 
sia, France, and Germany. Physical development not material- 
istic. Reply to Carlyle and Dickens. Case of California. Progress 
in education, scieuce, letters, and arts. Church-life. Power of the 
voluntary principle. Inventions serviceable to mankind, — light- 
ning-rod, cotton-gin, compound blow-pipe, steamboat, telegraph 
with Atlantic cable, anaesthetics, sewing-machine, writing-machine, 
reaping and mowing machines, fog-signals, &c. Institutions for 
diversified and collective humanity. 200 

LECTURE VI. 

THE PERILS, DUTIES, AND HOPES OF THE OPENING CENTURY. 

Luxury and corruption. These not peculiar to a republic. Russia, 
Turkey, Persia, Austria, Italy, France. Examples from earlier 
times/ Risks of universal suffrage. Race animosities. Political 
centralization. Ultramontane schemes. Resources in the intelli- 
gence, morality, and patriotism of the people; in the fact that the 
government, while fixed in principles, is flexible and improvable in 
forms. Need of improved civil service, of the cumulative ballot, 
of an educational test, and of training for the higher statesmanship. 
Future of the republic assured in the character of the people. . 218 

Publishers' Note 312 

Index 319 



HOW THIS BOOK GREW. 

THESE Lectures are published in obedience to the call 
of the audiences that listened to them in Berlin, 
Dresden, Florence, Paris, and London. 1 Those audiences 
comprised many persons of the highest condition and 
culture in Germany, Italy, France, and England, — states- 
men, jurists, diplomatists, professors, authors, divines, — as 
well as the chief representatives of American society in 
the great capitals of Europe. An auditory so diversified 
and so distinguished must have satisfied the ambition of 
any lecturer: but I am more proud to recognize their 
attendance as a compliment to my country; and most 
heartily do I thank my honored hearers for their earnest 
interest in the unfolding of American national life, and 
for their flattering request that the facts presented from 
the platform might again be laid before them in the more 
leisurely form of the printed page. 

When I announced a course of lectures on the " Origin 
and Development of the United States as a Nation," to be 
given in the hearing of Europeans, some of my country- 
men were of opinion, that, in the painful aspect of public 
affairs at home, it were better that Americans abroad 
should say or do nothing that should call attention to 
their country, already the subject of so much adverse 
criticism. There were those, even, who went so far as to 
say that they preferred not to be known as Americans, 
and would gladly exchange their nativity for that of an 
Englishman, a Frenchman, or a German. 2 Though I re- 

1 See Publishers' Note, p. 312. 

2 When Schopenhauer, the German pessimist, was in Italy, he \v- as 
accustomed to decry his country in presence of his French and English 
acquaintances. " The German fatherland," said he, " has reared no patriot 
in me. I am ashamed to be a German, they are so stupid a people." A 
Frenchman once replied, " If I thought so of my nation, I should at least 
hold my tongue about it." 

vii 



yiii CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

spected the former feeling as much as I despised the 
latter, I could not entertain it under the peculiar con- 
ditions of the Centennial year. " America is under a 
cloud," said some to whom I was ready to listen with 
deference ; " and the less that is said of her, the better. 
Till these disgraceful exposures are forgotten, we must 
hide our heads in silence, and trust to vindicate our coun- 
try by deeds rather than by words." 

My answer was, " I do not seek to give publicity to my 
country abroad, nor would I in any way obtrude her insti- 
tutions and history upon the notice of foreigners. But 
the publicity exists : she herself has given the occasion. 
The Centennial and the Exposition have drawn the eyes 
of the world upon her ; and, though there may be in some 
quarters a relish for the political scandal just now so rife, 
there will be among thoughtful men a readiness to review 
the history and experience of a nation, that, in its first 
century, has taken rank with the first powers of the 
world. My purpose is to deal with my country in the 
candid spirit of historical criticism ; and history, and, above 
all, the philosophy of history, is what no lover of truth 
and of man should fear to unfold. Besides, if my country 
is under a cloud, shall I skulk behind that cloud, and, in 
the day of her calamity, seek to hide my nativity ? There 
are Americans of whom I am ashamed ; but I am not 
ashamed of America. There are things in America for 
which I blush; but I do not blush to -own myself an 
American. If my country is dishonored, brave and manly 
words for her may be heroic deeds. JPulchrum est bene- 
facer e Msipublicce,etiam bene dlcere Jiaud absurdum est. All 
that I am I owe to my country. My training was in her 
schools. My knowledge, faith, .principles, whatever I 
value as a man, whatever makes manhood of value to me, 
I have learned of her. She shall have from me no waver- 
ing allegiance. Where my country is right, I shall stand 
for her against the world ; where she is wrong, I shall 
stand by her, and labor to correct the wrong, and bring her 
to the right again. And, above all, if there aire wrongs in 
her that are not of her, it is my sacred duty as a patriot 
and a Christian to separate the good from the evil, and 
show the inherent purity, dignity, and strength of the 



HOW THIS BOOK GREW. IX 

republic against the vices that assail all human institu- 
tions." 

With such convictions, it seemed to me that the Centen- 
nial year was a time for sowing seeds of thought concern- 
ing society and government, — seed sifted from that great 
harvest of experiment and experience that a century had 
ripened in the New World. It seemed to me, also, that the 
field was open and inviting; that, at a time when the 
leading nations of Europe are agitated with questions of 
political organization and of social reform, — especially 
with such topics as suffrage, the ballot, popular education, 
capital and labor, and the relations of Church and State, — 
an impartial review of the political, moral, industrial, and 
social development of the United States would be wel- 
comed by thoughtful men in other countries as a contri- 
bution, for profit or for warning, toward the solution of 
their own problems. To say that the interest manifested 
by European scholars and statesmen in the topics of these 
Lectures did not disappoint this expectation would be far 
too little for my gratitude. To repeat what they publicly 
said upon those topics would be quite too much for my 
modesty. Suffice it, that to have given occasion for such 
hearty and generous tributes to my country as were pub- 
licly uttered by Prof. Zumpt of Berlin, Prof. Villari of 
Florence, Prof. Whittmeyer of Paris, Sir Benson Maxwell, 
Sir James Anderson, Sir George Campbell, M. P., Sir 
Dudley Campbell, M.P., Mr. Henry Richard, M.P., Mr. 
M'Lagan, M.P., Mr. M'Arthur, M.P., Prof. Sheldon Amos 
of London, Prof. Legge of Oxford, Rev. Henry Allon, 
D.D., and others of like standing, was more than a com- 
pensation for the care and cost of preparing and delivering 
the Lectures. Would that those of my countrymen who 
fancy that the United States have lost the respect and 
confidence of men of culture abroad could have listened 
to such cordial and discriminating testimony to their 
worth and standing among the nations ! 

If these Lectures shall have any value for American 
readers, it will lie in the fact that they were written 
abroad, and with an eye to the queries of foreigners. 
Hence back of the objective presentation of facts is the 
subjective desire of meeting difficulties that are rather 



x CENTENNIAL OF AMEKICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

felt than stated. Having spent, in all, some seven years 
of my life in foreign countries, in the study of their peo- 
ples and institutions, and in intercourse with their better 
citizens, I have dispossessed myself of narrow national 
prejudices, and am able to speak of my own country with 
more of judicial fairness than might be possible, if I were 
writing amid the mingled patriotic and partisan excite- 
ments of the Centennial year at home. I trust, at least, 
that I have maintained the sober judgment of history ; 
and I hope, also, that the conviction of the wisdom and 
stability of American institutions, that has grown upon me 
as I have studied them from a distant point of view, will 
impart strength to any who may be wavering amid inter- 
nal conflicts. The experience of the past shows that the 
nation may go through many and serious trials without 
being at all in danger of its life. There is no fear that 
the Ship of State is going under just because she has 
shipped a few seas, perhaps has sprung a leak, and we are 
called to do some hard and dirty work at the pumps. 

I would here give emphasis to a point too often over- 
looked in the comparison of the United States with Eng- 
land and Germany, — that the distinction between society 
and the government is much more marked in America 
than in Europe. Though it happens in England and in 
Germany that men of small calibre, and sometimes of 
doubtful antecedents, are elected to Parliament, yet in 
both countries the government combines and centres in 
itself the best elements of society. Indeed, in Prussia the 
government is the quintessence of the national morality 
and culture : hence any serious delinquency of the gov- 
ernment would argue a corresponding defect in society 
itself. Quite otherwise is it in the United States. In- 
discriminate suffrage on the one hand, and political indif- 
ference on the other, there give opportunity to the worst 
elements of society to rise to the surface, and incorporate 
themselves into the government. This may or may not 
be a condemnation of democratic institutions ; but it is 
not necessarily a condemnation of American society. In 
the United States, the integrity and culture of the govern- 
ment are not the measure of these qualities in society. 
Who, for instance, would estimate the moral and intellect- 



HOW THIS BOOK GEEW. x [ 

nal status of New York by the City Government as com- 
pared with the Chamber of Commerce, the Century Club, 
or even with a dinner-company at the house of any gen- 
tleman of good social standing ? But, naturally enough, 
foreigners take the government to represent the people, 
and hence form very erroneous notions of American 
society. Indeed, few foreigners who visit the United 
States for the purpose of book-making have the opportu- 
nity of knowing the best society, for lack of personal 
introduction ; and hence their criticisms upon American 
culture reflect back upon themselves the circles in which 
they moved, and expose them to the ridicule of society 
for such companionship. I venture to hope that these 
pages may help to correct such misunderstandings, and to 
establish a criterion of both government and society in 
the United States. 

I have been urged to put the Lectures into the form of 
a text-book for students, but think it better to preserve 
the style in which they were given : first, because this has 
more of directness and freshness ; next, because this is the 
style in which the hearers of the Lectures will expect what 
they have asked to see in print; and, lastly, because this 
will show how, in point of fact, the United States have 
been set before European critics under circumstances of 
no ordinary delicacy. At the same time, the conscientious 
care which I have bestowed upon the text of the Lectures 
in all matters of fact, and the notes and references with 
which they are supplemented, may commend them to the 
use of the student, even in the absence of a more scien- 
tific form. That the opinions which the Lectures express 
upon the great variety of topics of which they treat will 
be acceptable to all readers is not to be expected, nor 
even to be desired, since an independent thinker most 
respects in others the quality that he asserts for himself, 
and puts forth his convictions, not with a primary view to 
their being accepted, but because he must needs speak 
what he thinks, and hopes thus to gain for his thoughts 
and suggestions precisely what they may be worth in the 
estimate of truth and in the interest of humanity. 

In conclusion, I would express my obligation to Prof. 
Dr. Lepsius, royal librarian, and to Dr. A. Potthast, libra- 



Xii CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

rian of the Reichstag, at Berlin, for the facilities they 
have kindly given me for consulting books pertinent to 
my subject, and to the Government of the United States 
for public documents placed at my disposal. I am indebt- 
ed to the Hon. Marshall O. Roberts of New York for files 
of journals, official reports, and other material made use 
of in my statistical compilations. 

I take occasion, also, to renew my thanks, already orally 
expressed, to the committees in the several cities where 
the Lectures were delivered, for their valuable services in 
preparing and conducting the arrangements for the course. 

As germane to the subject, and belonging to the record 
of the Centennial, I have prefixed to the Lectures two 
speeches made in London July 4, 1876. 



THE DAY WE CELEBRATE. 



MINSTER PALACE HOTEL, LONDON, JULY 4, 1876. 

Me. President, your Excellency the Minister of the United 
States, my Lord Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen. 

THE day we celebrate ? No, Mr. President and gentle- 
men, this day gives to every American all of celebrity 
lie has or can hope to attain. We cannot honor, we can- 
not exalt, this day, save by becoming in personal character, 
and in pnblic as well as private life, all that the day has 
made us capable of being as citizens and as men. He who 
lives ignobly, who abuses liberty to license and corruption, 
who neglects the spiritual laws of his being, and makes 
freedom pander to sordid and selfish aims, would desecrate 
the day by taking this toast upon his lips! For that 
which marks the day is that it made us possible as men 
born under the largest opportunities of freedom, and the 
highest incentives to self-development that such opportu- 
nities can supply ; made possible to every man the highest 
manhood of which he is capable. Great as were its bene- 
fits to us as citizens, what it did for us as men is infinitely 
greater ; and therefore it is a day not for Americans alone, 
but for mankind, to hold memorable and illustrious. 

I thank God that this birthday of the United States as 
a nation does not commemorate a victory- of arms. War 
preceded it, gave occasion to it, followed it; but the 
figure of Independence shaped on the Fourth of July, 
1776, wears no helmet, brandishes no sword, and carries 
no stain of slaughter and blood. I recognize all that war 
has done for the emancipation of the race, the progress of 
society, the assertion and maintenance of liberty itself; I 
honor the heroes who have braved the fury of battle for 

xiii 



X iy CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

country and right ; I appreciate the virtues to which war 
at times has trained nations, as well as leaders and armies : 
yet I confess myself utterly wearied and sated with these 
monuments of victory in every capital of Europe, made 
of captured cannon, and sculptured over with scenes of 
carnage. I am sick of that type of history that teaches 
our youth that the Alexanders and Caesars, the Frederics 
and Napoleons, are the great men who have made the 
world ; and.it is with a sense of relief and refreshment 
that I turn to a nation whose birthday commemorates a 
great moral idea, a principle of ethics applied to political 
society, — that government represents the whole people, 
for the equal good of all. No tide of battle marks this 
clay ; but itself marks the high-water line of heaving, sur- 
ging humanity. 

Neither is the separation of the American colonies from 
the mother-country the chief thing that this day com- 
memorates. That separation, indeed, marked and defined 
the principle of the Declaration of Independence, but was 
not the substance of the Declaration. I can fancy that a 
mother whose eldest daughter had run away from home, 
married against her will, and set up for herself, might 
become so reconciled by time as even to join her daughter 
in commemorating her self-willed wedding-day. But we 
could not have the bad taste to invite our English friends 
to join us in celebrating the runaway match of Britain's 
eldest daughter with that untitled and untamed fellow 
called "Independence," over the sea. No, my friends : 
when we think of England, it is not that we are divided 
from you, but that we were born of you, and are insepara- 
ble in the common heritage of literature and law, of free- 
dom and faith ; and therefore the sons of the men who 
fought against each other a century ago can feast together 
to-day. 

That which marks the Declaration of Independence is 
that then, for the first time in the political thought of the 
world, was formulated human personality as, by the will of 
God, the chief factor and concern of civil government. 
In the past, the State, the Church, the School, had too 
commonly used man as their subordinate, made to serve 
their ends, and to count but as a cipher in questions of 



THE DAY WE CELEBRATE. xv 

privilege and power. The American Declaration did not 
level any of these institutions, — the State, the Church, 
the School, — but it exalted man, through these and over 
these, to the point where he could use them all as his 
instruments for his service and culture. There was no 
radicalism in the Declaration, no communism, no atheism, 
but a wondrous humanism glorified by the divine, — "all 
men are created equal." The Declaration did not seek to 
overturn the State, but to establish it as ordained for the 
good of man. It did not make war upon religion, but set 
forth the right of man to life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness, as an endowment from his Creator, and therefore 
having the sanction of true religion. But it so defined 
the relations of men and things, that every institution of 
society should be valued and cherished in proportion to its 
adaptation to the well-being of man. Need I remind you 
how the principle then formulated and proclaimed is fast 
becoming the rule of government in all Christian states ? 
Need I remind you how, in this century, the British Parlia- 
ment has made itself illustrious by lifting the good of the 
individual above the traditions and customs of the past, 
and making man himself the argument for reform ? how, 
having swept the curse of slavery from coast, island, and 
sea, England now tells her officers, that, in every case 
affecting the life, liberty, and happiness of a fellow-being, 
the instinct of humanity should guide the decision of jus- 
tice ? Take care of the man first, and look to the quib- 
bles of the law afterwards. What America declared a 
hundred years ago, that Britain also does. It is because 
it threw the shield of liberty and law, of government and 
religion, over human personality, that this day deserves to 
be marked, not only in the annals of a nation, but in the 
calendar of time. 

I grant you freely, that neither the people of the United 
States in the aggregate, nor their government on the 
average, has realized the hope of the founders of the 
nation, or the ideal of the Declaration of Independence. 
But as man, however imperfect, and, if you please, fallen, 
is still the son of God, and that divine original is the 
grand motive and incentive to his recovery and exaltation ; 
so, however degenerate and unworthy men may be as sons 



Xvi CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

of freedom, that high prerogative remains the argument 
and hope for their final elevation. And, besides, what 
right have we as yet, in any land, to look for a perfect 
society ? Indeed, what would a society be worth for our 
mental and moral discipline that had no more problems to 
be solved, no more dangers to be met, no more evils to be 
overcome ? The very things that threaten and sometimes 
shame us give fibre to our manhood, and teach us the 
nobleness of labor, sacrifice, and suffering for the common 
good. For one, having given my active life to the great 
social and moral conflicts of my time, though I can submit 
to a retirement enforced by physical causes, I could never 
withdraw into a condition of mental indifference or of 
moral supineness toward questions affecting the welfare 
of my country or of man. I need such questions for my 
own soul's health ; to keep me up to the standard of manly 
virtues; to make me broader, wiser, stronger, while life 
shall last. A " rest " of stagnation is death. And the 
country needs the quickening, energizing influence that 
comes of struggling toward a higher development. It 
may seem, for the moment, to be against us, that we have 
such and such evils to encounter ; but it is greatly for us 
that we meet and master them. 

The century has been one of such striving and mastery. 
With all their shortcomings, the United States have not 
been a failure. It is hard, indeed, to satisfy our friends 
on this side of the water. For instance, a leading London 
journal of this morning, that seeks to be kindly even to the 
verge of condescension, regrets that the United States 
have done so little for the world beyond increasing the 
affluence of the means of animal existence. But, while 
gently chiding this alleged preponderance of " material " 
growth, our critic rates us roundly for having curtailed 
our national wealth by not adopting its own notions of 
free trade : " Their growth (i.e., the United States) 
would have been still greater, had not false and foolish 
notions of protective legislation deceived the democracy 
of America." True, no doubt; but what shall we do? If 
we grow, we are " material : " if we don't grow material 
enough, we are " false and foolish." 

The same journal would help us to the celebration of 



THE DAY WE CELEBRATE. XY U. 

the Centennial by putting into our mouths the theme 
which it fancies shall find " expression in a thousand 
shapes throughout this livelong day," — " Our forefathers 
were a handful of men, and we have become a great peo- 
ple." But I venture to say that no American patriot 
to-day will find his inspiration in such a theme ; for, Mr. 
President and gentlemen, that which we honor in our 
fathers is that they disdained the material and the earthly, 
and were ready to sacrifice life and fortune for truth, free- 
dom, right, — for ideas they had thought out for them- 
selves, and would fight out for mankind. And that which 
we are proud of to-day — so far as we dare be proud at all 
— is, not that they were few and we are many, that they 
were small and we are great, but. that they put the spiritual 
before the material, right before might, man before money, 
freedom and faith before all ; in a word, that they were 
men, and we are the inheritors of their manhood. 

The record of the United States is something more than 
of material growth. They have proved the possibility of 
free popular government upon a scale to which the Roman 
Republic of five hundred years was but a province ; they 
have shown that such a government can cope with gigantic 
evils and wrongs, and is strong to maintain itself against 
rebellion and war ; they have shown that the tendency of 
such a government is to peace and good-will, that it 
fosters industry and invention, diffuses knowledge fairly 
and fearlessly among the people ; they have reconciled 
liberty and law, freedom and order ; they have shown how 
religion, learning, and science flourish under freedom ; and 
though there may be a lack of some forms of culture, as 
developed by institutions of favoritism, there is a high 
grade of average culture, as well as comfort, fostered by 
equality. In view of all the physical and social conditions 
of their great problem, the American people may well take 
courage and hope to-day from the experience and results 
of the century. What we now need is to measure our 
rights by our duties, and our manner of discharging these ; 
to make freedom the guaranty of social order, of public 
purity, of justice and honor at home, of peace and faith 
abroad. 

And may I not accept the circumstances under which 



Xviii CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

we meet to-day as an augury that the two English-speak- 
ing nations will take a new point of departure for their 
common welfare in the opening century? First, has not 
the time fully come when these two nations shall study 
how to be helpful to each other, and to promote one 
another's good? It is always well to cherish the habit of 
seeing the good in our neighbors. Indeed, who would live 
in a community where perpetual tattling and fault-finding 
was the rule? Has not the time fully come for public 
sentiment in both nations to teach journalism and author- 
ship that we don't care to hear ill-natured tattle about our 
neighbors ; don't care to know how the boors in either 
country use their knives and forks, or pronounce their 
slang, but do have a hearty, manly interest- in learning 
each what the other is doing for education, for temperance, 
for virtue, for religion, for trade, for reform ; that we are 
glad to hear good of one another, and not ashamed to 
learn from each other some good and helpful thing in the 
great, common problems of our free Christian civilization? 

Next, these two nations should stand by one another for 
the maintenance of civil and religious liberty. I do not 
mean that we should form an alliance offensive and defen- 
sive, or take up a crusade for freedom. But there is a 
power that is growing stronger than armies, — the public 
opinion of enlightened peoples. Let the world feel the 
moral force of our united opinion; know that England 
and the United States back one another up for that civil 
and religious liberty which we have wrought out, and 
which we hold before all other peoples of the earth. And, 
once more, let us stand together for the peace and moral 
order of the world, — at peace between ourselves, and com- 
mending peace to the nations by all our influence in 
treaties and conventions, in word and in deed. 

The other day I stood at Ilfracombe, and watched the 
sun as he went down straight into the bosom of the 
Atlantic ; thus certifying me that there was nothing to 
divide the shore on which I stood from that other shore I 
hold so dear, save the ocean, that washes both alike with 
the same ever-recurring waves. Recalling how the names 
that dot that English coast, from Barnstaple around to 
Plymouth, are reproduced upon the shore of New England, 



THE DAY WE CELEBRATE. x [ x 

I felt how tender and sacred to our fathers were the haunts 
and homes of the mother-country, and how impossible it 
should be to separate lands so joined in common baptism. 
At that moment some smaller waves, more ambitious than 
the rest, as if they would carry the ocean at their backs, 
leaped up to overwhelm and sweep away the cliffs of 
England, but fell back in their own foam and spray, leav- 
ing nothing but the slime and weeds of the sea. So let it 
be, so shall it be, with the restless, fuming agitators, who, 
thinking to have the people at their backs, would dash 
either nation against the other. Let them sink back into 
their own spume, while we listen to the deep, everlasting 
harmony that rolls between. That ocean fills the awful 
chasm that else had divided us, and is now the highway of 
peace and good-will. In the fore-part of the century now 
closed, that ocean twice carried the fleets of England to 
desolate our coasts with war: but the last half of the 
century gave birth to the steamship, quickening the 
exchange of commerce and travel ; and to the Atlantic 
cable, making the depths of the sea vital with thought and 
intelligence. May these be the augury of the new cen- 
tury ! O England, mother of saints, mother of martyrs, 
mother of heroes, mother of scholars, poets, statesmen ! — 
England, mother of freedom and faith, of colonies and of 
nations ! — God keep thee ever in thy bright and glorious 
way! and keep us nobly by thy side, till this brave speech 
of ours, fast overmastering the languages of the world, 
shall teach the nations that the English tongue knows only 
words of truth and freedom, of right and love ! Then come 
again the day we celebrate. 

The friendly spirit in which this speech was reproduced 
in the leading journals of London, of the Provinces, and 
of Scotland, was a pleasant token of the extent to which 
old prejudices have given place to an enlightened liber- 
ality. But it was curious to notice how, in some quarters, 
the reviving of the American Declaration seemed to revive 
the antipathies of a century ago. As an example of this, 
I give the following editorial from " The Sussex Daily 
News "of July 6: — 



xx CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

" With braying of trumpets, and booming of guns, the centenary 
of American independence has been kept. There have been great 
spectacles in Philadelphia, much dining and speechifying in London. 
A Dr. Thompson was particularly grandiloquent on this side of the 
Atlantic, and enlarged upon the Declaration of Independence with 
great unction. He said, ' The American Declaration did not level 
any of these institutions, — the State, the Church, the School, — but 
it exalted man, through these and over these, to the point where he 
could use them all as his instruments for his service and culture. 
There was no radicalism in the Declaration, no communism, no 
atheism, but a wondrous humanism, glorified by the divine, — "all 
men are created equal." ' No communism or atheism, certainly, but 
a good deal of inaccuracy. How any one who knows any thing of 
human life can say that all men are created equal passes our compre- 
hension. The one great fact which strikes the most superficial ob- 
server, and which overwhelms the most thoughtful, is the enormous 
inequalities to be found among men born in the same land even, not 
to say those born in different lands. They are unequal in physical 
strength, in mental gifts, in the possession of v> faith, in the number 
of friends, in all their surroundings. Even if we take the same 
class, the differences are enormous. They begin before birth : they 
continue till the last hour of life. The child of profligate, drunken 
parents, has not a thousandth part of the chances of a child whose 
parents are virtuous and sober. If we take different classes, the 
inequalities are still greater. It makes all the difference to a man in 
London whether he is born in one postal district or in another. The 
child who is registered in ' W.' or k S.VYV has ten times the chances of 
one registered "in 'E.' or 'N.E.' A person of very ordinary capacity 
may rise to very high office in the state, as we may see at the present 
time, if only he happen to belong to the ruling families. On the 
other hand, one could almost weep to think of the number of men, 
with genius sufficient to have shaken the senate or to have founded 
our empire, who have died and made no sign, simply because they 
were born the sons of tradesmen or laboring-men. l Mute, inglorious 
Miltons ' and ' village Hampdens ' have passed from poetry into a 
proverb ; so certain is it that great minds have passed away without 
making themselves known, simply for lack of opportunity. The 
waste of mental power is as great as the waste of seeds that are scat- 
tered by the winds over the earth, and perish on waste, stony places, 
or are trampled under foot on the dusty highway. If it be said that 
real genius will always find an opportunity, and make its way. we 
reply, that perhaps the most transcendent minds will ; but. even then, 
much harder is the task where the surroundings are unfavorable. 
But there is no need to dwell upon such extreme cases. "We must all 
know plenty of them in every-day life. "We must all have seen, over 
and over again, men beginning the career of life on fairly equal 
terms, so far as abilities go : yet, because the external circumstances 
were propitious in the one case, and unfavorable in the other, the one 
has attained prosperity ; the other has had to lament that all the voy- 
age of his life l is bound in shallows and in miseries.' If it be said 
that the statement that ' all men are created equal ' means simply 



THE DAY AVE CELEBRATE. xx { 

that they are born with equal rights, how will that console the child 
of sin and crime when he sees the child of luxury and virtue? The 
second has the right to place himself among the rulers of the land : 
what rights has the first, save to the workhouse and the jail? It is 
time that such blatant nonsense came to an end. All men are not 
created equal, either in mind, body, or estate. We may be perplexed 
and overwhelmed by the greatness of the inequalities, and we may 
try to shut our eyes to them ; but they exist none the less because we 
choose to go blindfold." 

Knowing the candor and courtesy of the English press, 
I sent a brief reply to this criticism, which was kindly 
published, without comment, in " The Sussex Daily News " 
of July 29. I reprint that letter here, because its leading 
query remains unanswered ; and the fact that no English 
statesman or philosopher would dare, deny that govern- 
ment should impartially secure the equal birthright of all 
to " life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," shows how 
the doctrine of the Declaration has permeated English 
society. 

To the Editor of " The Sussex Daily News." 

Sir, — In your issue of July 6, you did me the honor to make my 
speech at the American Centennial dinner in London the text for 
some just and excellent remarks, showing that •• all men are not 
created equal, either in mind, body, or estate." What you say is not 
only true in itself, but serves to illustrate the wisdom of the Decla- 
ration of Independence, and to fortify its position. I speak of the 
Declaration purely as a contribution to political ethics, and without 
reference to forms of government or the constitution of society. 

The Declaration avoids the '-blatant nonsense " that men are equal 
intellectually, socially, or politically ; but it declares that "all men 
are created equal " in the right to " life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness." Speaking to those who were familiar with the docu- 
ment, I did not think it necessary to enlarge upon the " self-evident 
truths " by which the Declaration defines and limits its affirmation of 
equality. I am persuaded, that, ibr the truth of history, you will lay 
before your readers this statement of the real doctrine of the Declara- 
tion ; and I beg you to inform me whether there is to-day in Eng- 
land a statesman or a philosopher who would deny that all men are 
created with an equal right to live, with an equal right to the free 
use of their powers in making the most of themselves and their exist- 
ence, and an equal right to all the happiness they can lawfully pursue 
and attain. 1 To-day these are commonplaces concerning man and 

1 For the full import of this doctrine, and the exact meaning of equal- 
ity in the Declaration, the reader is referred to the second Lecture. 



XXli CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

government, that England accepts no less than the United States. 
But, as I said in London, "that which marks the Declaration of 
Independence is, that then, for the first time in the political thought 
of the world, was formulated human personality as, by the will of God, 
the chief factor and concern of civil government." This notion of 
equality is simply a question of fact in political science, 

I am, sir, with high respect, yours truly, 

Joseph P. Thompson. 
Berlin, 11 July, 1876. 



THE LINCOLN TOWER. 



[Attached to Christ Church, in the Westminster-bridge Road, Lambeth, 
London, is a line stone tower, which was erected to commemorate Pres. 
Lincoln and the abolition of slavery in the United States. The cost of this 
tower was seven thousand pounds, of which one-half was raised in Ameri- 
ca by the Rev. Newman Hall, pastor of the church, during his visits in 
1867 and 1873. On the morning of July 4, 1876, Christ Church, which is a 
perpetuation of Surrey Chapel, Avas dedicated with appropriate religious 
services; and, at the close of these, the Lincoln Tower, which from base to 
summit was decorated with the flags of England and the United States, 
was inaugurated by Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, Bart. After this cere- 
mony, cheers were given for the Centenary of American Independence, 
and in memory of Washington and Wilberforce, for each of whom a cham- 
ber in the tower is named. Adjoining the church, and forming with it 
an admirable architectural group, is Hawkstone Hall, a well-appointed 
building, to be used for those auxiliary social, benevolent, and reformatory 
meetings and works for which Surrey Chapel was famed. The services of 
dedication and inauguration were followed by a collation in Hawkstone 
Hall. At the inauguration of the Lincoln Tower, the following speech was 
made in the name of American citizens interested in this international 
memorial.] 

THE tower outside the building, no less than this inner 
sanctuary, is consecrated to the glory of God ; for, 
though it bears upon its front an honored human name, 
its spire points upward to " the Name that is above every 
name," " of whom the whole family in heaven and earth," 
of every kindred and tongue and people and nation, is 
named. The name } t ou have inscribed upon the tower 
is worthy of this association; for Abraham Lincoln 
shall stand in history as a synonyme of the Christian 
virtues, — -truth, fidelity, honor, magnanimity, meekness, 
gentleness, patience, self-sacrifice, love to man, and faith 
in God ; the man who bore the heaviest burdens and trials 
of his country and his fellows, who endured years of 
obloquy and hatred such as few have been called to suffer, 
but lived " with firmness in the right as God gave him to 
see the right," and died " with malice toward none, with 
charity for all." 



Xxiv CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

The tower is " a memorial of emancipation." It was 
fitting, surely, that a house of worship projected at the 
moment of the emancipation of four million slaves 
should mark the date of its erection by so grand an epoch 
for humanity ; and it was eminently significant that such 
an event should be chronicled by a church bearing the 
name of Him who came " to preach the gospel to the poor, 
to heal the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the 
captives, and 1 the opening of the prison to them that are 
bound." " This day is this scripture fulfilled in your 
ears." These walls that you have built shall be u stones 
of memorial " to all generations, witnessing how close 
Christianity takes Humanity to her heart. 

This exemplification of Christianity has always marked 
the ministry and work of Surrey Chapel, and is henceforth 
to be perpetuated by most admirable arrangements in your 
new home. While the church proper shall be kept sacred, 
as it should be, to the worship of Cod, the adjoining suite 
of buildings provides for the practical ministrations of 
Christianity to Society, especially for the enlightenment 
and amelioration of the masses. Humanity is housed 
under the same roof with Christ. That is your answer to 
the materialism of the age, and to the social and political 
philosophy that would undertake to reform and elevate the 
masses, not only without the gospel, but even by decrying 
it. You say to such reformers, " It was Christianity that 
first really cared for man ; it is Christianity that cares for 
him still, and so makes possible your philosophy of reform : 
and Christianity shall continue to care for man when your 
philosophy shall have exhausted the philanthropy it lias 
borrowed of the gospel without union with its source." 

It is because of this practical work for man that Surrey 
Chapel has always been of special interest to Americans. 
If there is one thing that marks American society, and 
makes the American nation worth commemorating to-day, 
it is that man is there the first object of thought and care, 
and this through the development of his spiritual nature, — 
man set free under the guidance of the gospel, man to be 
kept free by means of his moral and religious culture. It 
is because Surrey Chapel works practically on this plat- 
form and toward this ideal that it finds such favor in the 



THE LINCOLN TOWER. XXV 

United States, and lias always been sought out by Ameri- 
cans visiting London. But we owe to Mr. Newman Hall 
the special privilege of sharing directly in your prosperity 
and your work by contributions to the memorial tower. 
His personal character and influence secured those contri- 
butions : and his hold upon Americans was due, first, to his 
earnestness and power as a preacher of the gospel ; and, 
next, to his sagacity in discerning, and his courage in main- 
taining, the right side in our great civil conflict. He fore- 
saw from the first that our real struggle was with slavery, 
and that slavery was doomed ; and having thrown his 
whole soul into the conflict in which Lincoln was leader 
and martyr, and done so much to form a right sentiment 
in England, he is entitled to call the Lincoln Tower " a 
token of international good-will." As such I am proud 
to recognize and acknowledge it in the name of my coun- 
trymen. If the Atlantic cable shall at once convey to 
America the report of your doings here to-day, I am sure 
that above the ringing of bells, the booming of cannon, the 
jubilations of independence, there will go up to God the 
voice of Christian thanksgiving for this your fellowship, 
and the prayer that the peoples so truly one in Christian 
thought and feeling may be ever one in " international 
good-will." 

But, if I stay much longer in England, that word " inter- 
national " will cease to be for me a talisman ; for I am 
fast losing my sense of nationality, if not of personal 
identity. I have just been down to Devonshire; and I 
was so struck with the familiarity of the names called out 
at the railway-stations, that I took out my map, and, just 
in that western bit of England, found some twenty towns 
with which I am familiar in New England, — Dorchester, 
Wareham, Portland, Portsmouth, Lyme, Taunton, Dart- 
mouth, Exeter, Barnstaple, Biddeford, Hampsteacl, Plym- 
outh, Falmouth, Maiden, Milford, Reading, Weymouth, 
Wilton. Your whole map might be laid down on our side 
of the water; only we have no "Land's End " over there, 
or at least ha^e not found it yet. At Plymouth, in the 
fine new Guild Hall, I was shown, a splendid memorial 
window of the Pilgrim Fathers. There, amid the proud 
memories of Hawkins, Drake, Frobisher, Raleigh, Blake, 



XXvi CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

and other heroes of England's maritime glory, stand on 
the barbican those heroes of conscience and the gospel, 
about to step aboard "The Mayflower," — the richest 
fi eight that ever England sent to sea. Fresh from these 
memories I came back to London, to stand on the Fourth 
of July within the Lincoln Tower, the token of interna- 
tional good- will, and hear you sing " Coronation " and 
" America " as heartily as if you were at the Centennial in 
Philadelphia. Can you wonder that the tears start for 
very joy as I fancy myself at home ? 

But let us beware of making "international " a word of 
cant. The international is born of the Christian, not the 
Christian of the international. In Hugo Grotius, the law 
of nations was conceived of Christian light and love. Let 
us not think to broaden Christianity by calling that inter- 
national. All our names and terms would but narrow 
the gospel that is for every creature, the church that 
knows no limit of land or sea, of earth or time. How 
dare we restrict the Church of Christ to our communion, 
to our order, to our nation, or even our international alli- 
ances? In our social spirit and our political policy, the 
international sentiment does, indeed, make us broader. 
Not so as members of the body of Christ. It is his spirit 
that makes us broad; that lifts us' out of all our preju- 
dices and conceits ; that teaches us how in him there is 
neither Greek nor Jew, Barbarian nor Scythian, male nor 
female, bond nor free. The more we have of that spirit, 
the more shall we manifest of international, rather of 
universal, good- will. And is not the spirit of Christ strong 
enough in England and in the United States, are there 
not Christian men enough in both countries, to make the 
governments feel that every difference that may arise be- 
tween them shall be approached from the Christian point 
of view, and settled by the principles of Christian morality 
and equity ? Is not our Christianity great enough to keep 
us in the bonds of peace ? The timely assertion of the 
Christian spirit will preserve international good-will. 
This tower, upon whose every pinnacle the flags of the 
two countries lovingly embrace on this Centenary of their 
separation, is an omen of the new era of international har- 
mony ordered by Christian love. The people who to-day 



THE LINCOLN TOWER. XXvii 

with tearful gratitude shall read the name of Lincoln with 
that of Washington — how can they ever be estranged 
from you who have here given both names a sanctuary 
under the Church of Christ ? The Lord bless you, pastor 
and people, church and congregation, English men and 
nation, forevermore ! 



LECTURE I. 

GROUNDS AND MOTIVES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 

ON the Fourth of July, 1776, the then United Colo- 
nies of North America awoke to the consciousness 
of a national life, and declared themselves "free and 
independent /States, absolved from all allegiance to the 
British crown," and " with full power to levy war, con- 
clude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and do 
all other acts and things which independent States may of 
right do." 

This was not a declaration of war with Great Britain, 
since, for almost fifteen months, the people of the Colonies 
had been in arms against the British authorities, 1 and for 
a full year there had been a Continental army, equipped 
by the Continental Congress, and commanded by Wash- 
ington. 2 This declaration was not a manifesto of rebellion ; 
for, though the Colonies thus openly threw off their alle- 
giance to the parent-country, the act was justified by suc- 
cess, which transformed it from a rebellion into a revolu- 
tion. This last term, however, in the political history of 
Europe, has come to be so identified with sudden and 
violent upheavals of society, with outbursts of popular 
passion, and with wild theories of government, that I dep- 
recate the application of it to that moderate, patient, and 
matured action by which the people of the American Colo- 
nies declared that " all political connection between them 

1 The battles of Lexington and Concord were fought April 19, 1775; the 
"battle of Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775. 

2 On the loth June, 1775, the Congress at Philadelphia adopted the army 
before Cambridge, consisting wholly of New-England troops, as the Con- 
tinental army, and elected George Washington "commander-in-chief. On 
the 3d July, 1775, Washington took command of the army at Cambridge. 

1 



2 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

and the State of Great Britain is, and onglit to be, totally 
dissolved." 

In the conception of political philosophy, this act of the 
colonists, formally renouncing the authority of the govern- 
ment under which the Colonies had been planted and ad- 
ministered, and asserting their independence as a nation, 
was a revolution. But it was not a revolution in the 
sense of a war upon certain classes, orders, customs in 
civil society', nor against a form of government as such ; 
not an assault upon an hereditary monarchy in the name 
of a theoretical democracy ; not a struggle for power 
between different dynasties, factions, or political schools 
within the State ; in one word, not a revolution after the 
French or Spanish kind. 

The colonists renounced their allegiance to George III., 
not because he was a king, but because they had ccme to 
look upon him as " a prince whose character was marked 
by every act which may define a tyrant," and therefore 
" unfit to be the ruler of a free people." As Englishmen, 
and the sons of Englishmen, they were free-born. If the 
crown had hereditary prerogatives, the subject had heredi- 
tary rights ; and it was in defence of the rights and liber- 
ties of Englishmen against usurped and arbitrary power 
that they took up arms, and were driven at last to revolu- 
tion and independence. Call it not "revolution," then, 
with the smack of European associations in the term : 
call it rather restoration, recovery, the reconstruction of 
political society upon that broad and equal basis of rights 
of person, of propert\ T , and of representation, which under- 
lies the institutions of the Anglo-Saxon race. 

Nay, it is not so much the act, as the people who did 
that act, that arrests us in the Declaration of July 4, 1770 ; 
a people loyal and true, a people just and brave, generous 
and forbearing, but a people who are and must be free, — 
such a people harried by usurpations into that community 
in danger and in defence which is the first consciousness 
of national life, lifting itself up before the world, and pro- 
claiming, " We are one ; we are free." '• Ua grand peuple 
qui se releve " was the description by which Comte de 
Gasparin characterized the uprising of the people of the 
United States in 1861 to maintain their Constitution and 



GROUNDS AND MOTIVES OF THE REVOLUTION. 3 

Government ; and, going back to that scene of 1776, Ave 
see in the foreground, not the spirit of revolution nor of 
democracy, but tin grand peuple qui se reVve, — a people, 
indeed, far from imposing in numbers or might, but grand 
in the assertion of right, in the inspiration of justice, in 
devotion to freedom, and in heroic sacrifice. 

To such a people national independence was a fore- 
gone conclusion, not, indeed, in their own original pur- 
pose, but in the logic of events. It was given in the fact 
that thirteen Colonies, distinct in origin and institutions, 
and with diverse and sometimes rival interests, had made 
common cause in resisting the oppressive measures and 
demands of the British Government ; in the fact, that, 
nearly two years before, these Colonies had appointed a 
Congress to consult for their common welfare, and this 
Congress had put forth a " Declaration of Rights," affirm- 
ing, among other things, that u the foundation of English 
liberty and of all free government is a right in the peo- 
ple to participate in their legislative council ; " in the fact 
that a second Continental Congress l had now been in ses- 
sion for fourteen months, had taken measures for the 
common defence, had raised a loan, had organized an army, 
had passed high resolves ; and, above all, in the fact that 
the battle of Bunker Hill and subsequent engagements 
had shown that the American militia could stand the fire 
of British regulars, and could supply the lack of discipline 
by agility and daring. When Washington heard of that 
battle, he asked, " Did the militia stand fire?" and when 
told that they stood under fire until the enemy was within 
eight rods, and then poured in their own volleys, he said, 
" The liberties of the country are safe." For more than a 
year, Washington had been drilling and disciplining the 

1 The first Continental Congress, convened at the instance of Massa- 
chusetts, met at Philadelphia Sept. 5, 1774. The place of assenihly was 
Carpenters' Hall, at the head of a court running back from Chestnut Street, 
between Third and Fourth. Many years of my boyhood were spent in a 
school in that old patriotic hall/ The previous Congress at New York, 
Oct. 7, 1765, was known as the "American Congress." 

The Congress of 1774, before adjourning, recommended that a second 
Congress should be convened in the following May. On the 10th of May, 
1775. the second Continental Congress met in Philadelphia. This Congress 
carried the country through the war of Independence, and, though dwin- 
dling in numbers and influence, remained in authority as the central gov- 
ernment until the establishment of the Confederation in 1781. 



4 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

army of which the men of Lexington, Concord, and Bun- 
ker Hill, were the nucleus. The "liberties of the country " 
had been fermenting in the hearts of the people. Men who 
for more than a }~ear had suffered and counselled and 
fought together, now that the last overtures of reconcilia- 
tion were rejected by the British Government, must be 
free and independent, as they were already united and 
determined ; and so the spirit of independence that was 
in the hearts of the people, in the army, in the air, awoke 
in Congress the consciousness that the Colonies it repre- 
sented were a nation. 

That this consciousness was true, and this declaration 
not premature, will be evident from a brief analysis of the 
essential attributes and conditions of a nation. The nation 
is a people established and settled upon a certain territory 
as their own, united under a government of their own, 
and having absolute and exclusive sovereignty within and 
over said territory and all and each of its inhabitants. 
The ;e attributes of territorial occupancy, political unity, 
and independent sovereignty, inhere in the nation or body 
politic as such, and are quite distinct from forms of gov- 
ernment, and modes of administration. These last are but 
the outward and changeable expression of an inward and 
permanent fact, — the organs by which the nation, which 
is the living organism, serves itself, and manifests its life. 
Sometimes, also, one or more of these essential attributes 
of the nation — territory, unity, sovereignty — maybe 
in a state of abe}~ance, or may exist in posse, awaiting 
manifestation in esse, without annihilating the national 
consciousness, or materially impairing the national life. 
A portion of territory may be held by an invader, and yet 
the nation live, and live the more vigorously in efforts to 
recover its lost possessions. Political unity may be dis- 
turbed by rebellion, yet the life of the nation, the inher- 
ent vitality of the body politic, assert itself the more in 
maintaining the social organism and its government intact. 
Sovereignty may be brought under by conquest ; yet the 
life of the nation, burning the more intensely that it is 
pent up, may burst forth with the volcanic sovereignty of 
a revolution. When Marshal Bazaine sought to excuse 
his irresolution at Metz by saying that he knew not where 



GROUNDS AND MOTIVES OF THE REVOLUTION. 5 

or what was the government of the country, nor, indeed, 
whether there was any longer a government to which he 
owed allegiance, the Due d'Aumale interposed the passion- 
ate exclamation, '-'•Mais la France, la France!" That 
pathetic outburst of patriotism was the cry of the nation, 
still conscious of its life. Without emperor, king, presi- 
dent, or parliament, without flag, general, army, or battle- 
cry, without ally abroad, without resource at home, her 
provinces subjugated, her capital beleaguered, her counsels 
divided, her inner sanctuary threatened by the torch of 
the patricide, France still lived, the nation, with a title 
supreme and absolute to the homage and service of her 
sons. Germany found a nation to treat with even in the 
extemporized assembly at Bordeaux ; and the world has 
seen a nation vanquished and dismembered, yet capable 
of paying an enormous ransom, of re-organizing industry, 
trade, education, the army, finance, and at length, from 
the chaos of conflicting elements at Versailles, bringing 
forth a form of government to represent, at least for a 
time, the indestructible essence of the body politic. There 
is still a France, a people occupying a territory of their 
own, having a substantial unity in a government of their 
own, with absolute and exclusive sovereignty over its 
subjects and its soil. 

Applying these criteria of a nation to the American 
Colonies that in 1776 declared their independence, we 
there find a people numbering two and a half millions, — 
equal to one-third of the population of England and 
Wales, and double that of Scotland, at that time ; and, 
of these two and a half millions, the vast majority (say 
four-fifths) were of the same race, language, and political 
parentage, 1 — Englishmen and the sons of Englishmen, 
more truly homogeneous in feeling and speech, in manners 
and ideas, than were the several parts of Great Britain 
itself. 

We find this people occupying a territory of 820,680 

1 Mr. Burke, in his Speech on Conciliation with America, places the pop- 
ulation of the Colonies at 2,500,000, of whom 2,000,000 were English and 
of English descent. The population of England and AVales was then 
7,500,000; that of Scotland, 1,270,000. By the census of 1700, the population 
of the United States was 3,5)20,214:; that of England, Wales, and Scotland, 
10,000,000. Probably in 1770 the Colonies numbered 3,000,000, —a good, 
healthy nucleus of national life. 



(3 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

square miles, or more than nine times the area of Great 
Britain ; 1 a territory remote from all organized commu- 
nities, and isolated by the forests, the lakes, and the sea ; 
a territory which they had redeemed from the wilderness 
to be the abode of civilized man, which they had defend- 
ed, at cost of their blood and treasure, against Indian 
tribes and French garrisons, and had covered with town- 
ships, cities, villages, and homesteads ; a territory whose 
wooded wastes they had converted into a granary to 
relieve the scarcity of corn in the mother-country, and 
whose rocky, ice-bound coasts they had animated with a 
commerce, which, at that time, almost equalled the foreign 
trade of England at the beginning of the eighteenth cen- 
tury with the whole world. " No sea," said Mr. Burke, 
" but what is vexed hy their fisheries ; no climate that 
is not witness to their toils. Neither the perseverance of 
Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous 
and firm sagacity of English enterprise, ever carried this 
most perilous mode of hardy industry [the whale-fishery] 
to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent 
people." 2 Such in their physical condition and achieve- 
ments were the people who now claimed to be a nation. 
They had a territory of their own, which they had shown 
themselves able to occupy and improve, and to hold 
against all comers. 

By force of circumstances, too, they had now attained to 
political unity under a government which they recognized 
and upheld as their proper representative. Much as the 
Colonies differed in their original political settlement, — 
seme being directly provinces of the crown, others pro- 
prietary grants, and others chartered companies or set- 
tlements, 3 — they all agreed in asserting and cherishing 

1 The area of England and "Wales is 58,320 square miles; that of Scot- 
land, 31,324: total, S\),CM square miles. 

2 Speech on Conciliation with America. 

3 Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island held charters from 
the crown, hy virtue of which the government was largelv rested in the 
freemen of the company or colony. The charters of Connecticut and 
Rhode Island were so liberal, that, for many years after the Revolution, 
they served the purpose of State constitutions, — that of Connecticut till 
1818, that of Rhode Island till 1842. 

Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and at first, also, aSTew Jersey and 
the Caroiinas, had proprietary governments: i.e., the proprietor who held 
the grant in person from the crown had also a control in political affairs. 



GROUNDS AND MOTIVES OF THE REVOLUTION. J 

that good old English principle of local self-government, 
which was fast falling into desuetude in England itself. 
The Hon. George C. Brodrick, in his valuable essay on 
" Local Government in England," observes, " It is a curi- 
ous and instructive fact, that, while the primitive ideal of 
self-government had become obscured both in English 
counties and in English boroughs, it not only survived, 
but acquired a fresh vitality, in the Colonies of New Eng- 
land." x By degrees, this local self-government, practised 
in districts and townships as matter of custom and conven- 
ience, expanded in confederate counsel and action in mat- 
ters of common duty and danger. In those days, before 
steam-navigation was dreamed of, the mother-country was 
so distant, and communication was so tardy and irregular, 
that the colonists were often compelled to act upon their 
own responsibility, without waiting for the sanction of 
the crown. As far back as 1643, four of the Colonies of 
New England — Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Connec- 
ticut, and New Haven — formed a confederacy for their 
mutual safety and welfare, especially as against the French 
and the Indians ; and this league, under the name of " The 
United Colonies of New England," — "a self-governing 
association of self-governing English commonwealths," 2 
assuming in so far the functions of a distinct sovereignty, — 
lasted for more than forty years. In 1754, twenty-two 
years before the Declaration of Independence, a general 
convention of the Colonies was summoned at Albany to 
renew a treaty with the " Six Nations " of Indians. Ben- 
jamin Franklin proposed a formal union of the Colonies 
as their only protection against the French. His motto 

The charter to Lord Baltimore, however, reserved to the colonists a share 
in legislation; and Penn freely gave the same right to his colonists. 

New Hampshire, New York, Virginia, Georgia, and afterwards New 
Jersey and the Caroliuas, were under royal or provincial governments. 
The governor was appointed by the crown, and al"o a council, which served 
as the upper house of the legislature; the lower house being elected by 
the people. It is sufficient for my purpose to point out the three forms of 
colonial government, without stating the specihc differences under each 
form. 

i Cobden-Club Essays for 1875, p. 25. 

2 Palfrey: History of New England, i. 034. As a consequence of the 
union of New Haven with Connecticut, the confederacy of 1643 was 
terminated in 1607; but a new league was entered into between Plymouth, 
Massachusetts, and Connecticut (1072), which was finally dissolved in 1084. 
Thus the principle of colonial confederation was in action in New Eng- 
land, in the seventeenth century, for a period of forty years. 



8 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

was, " Unite, or die ! " * Sometimes such conventions were 
summoned or sanctioned by the officers of the crown ; 
sometimes they were quite outside the pale of legitimate 
government as recognized by the crown : but, dictated by 
necessity, and justified by their beneficial results, they 
were educating the people to independence of the crown. 
The union urged hy Franklin against the military rival of 
their parent-country, twenty years later, was formed to 
protect the rights and liberties of the Colonies against the 
encroachments of Great Britain herself. Virtually, indeed, 
the political union of the American Colonies was formed as 
early as 1765, though few then dreamed of an independ- 
ent nation asjits issue. In June of that }~ear, James Otis 
of Boston " advised the calling of an American Congress, 
which should come together without asking the consent 
of the king, and should consist of committees from each 
of the thirteen Colonies, to be appointed respectively by 
the delegates of the people, without regard to the other 
branches of the legislature." 2 In October of the same 
year, the representatives of the people of eleven Colonies 
met in New York " to consult together, and consider of 
a united representation to implore relief." Petition, re- 

1 The proceedings of this convention at Albany, in 1754, are given at 
length in the Documentary History of New York, vol. ii. ]>p. 317 seq. 
They are of exceeding interest in three particulars. (1.) The commis- 
sioners to the Congress were appointed l>y The govej nori or legislatures of 
the several Colonies, "in pursuance of letters from the Right Honorable 
the Lords Commissioners for Trade and the Plantations." Tims the 
British Government made use of the expedient of a convention of the 
Colonies for framing articles of union and confederation with the Iroquois 
as a treaty-making power. 

(2.) This Congress, though appointed for the specific purpose of treat- 
ing with the Indians, took it upon itself to plan a union of the Colonies 
" for their mutual defence and security, and for extending the British set- 
tlements in North America." Thi; plan was referred to the governments 
of the several Colonies for approval. 

(:>. ) The scheme proposed an act of Parliament, "hy virtue of which one 
general goA^ernment may he formed in America, including all the Colonies, 
within and under which government each Colony may retain its present 
constitution." There was to he a pre si dent-general appointed and sup- 
ported by the crown, and a grand council to be chosen hy the represen- 
tatives of the people of the several Colonies. The acts of the council 
required to be sanctioned, first by the president, and then by the king. 
Though this plan never came to maturity, it, shows how the colonists cher- 
ished local government and union, without aiming at independence. 

2 Bancroft: History of the United States, vol. v. p. 279. 

John Adams said of Otis, "He was at the head of the cause of his 
country. . . . His oration against writs of assistance breathed into the 
nationthe breath of life." — Works, vol. x. p. 27G. 



GROUNDS AND MOTIVES OF THE REVOLUTION. 9 

monstrance, repeal, were in their minds, with no thought 
as yet of separation and war. But in the very act of thus 
coming together as directly representing the popular branch 
in the government, without regard to governors, councils, 
magistrates, or other parties claiming to represent the 
crown, they asserted a right of self-government inherent 
in the people, and a unity of political life above all diver- 
sities of form. That union found expression in such sen- 
timents as these : " There ought to be no New-England 
man, no New-Yorker, known on the continent, but all of 
us Americans ; " the Colonies are " a bundle of sticks, 
which can neither be bent nor broken." And, while the 
hands of those delegates draughted a union of the Colo- 
nies for their present redress, they unconsciously drew the 
faint shadowy outlines of the nation, from which the fiery 
alchemy of war should bring out the resplendent figure 
of Liberty. The nation was there in possz ; a people 
permanently settled upon a territory, which by enterprise, 
by labor, or by purchase, they had made their own, had 
redeemed from nature, had enriched by cultivation, had 
defended from jealous rivals and from savage foes ; a 
people that through forms as yet inchoate, or occasional 
and flexible, had come to realize their political unity of 
interest, of spirit, and of action. Nor was the third essen- 
tial attribute of sovereignty wanting, though as yet there 
was no formal, coherent organization of sovereign power. 

When this Congress of 1765 had adjourned, and so was 
finally dissolved, the people of the several Colonies ratified 
its conclusions, and accepted these as their own : and, 
though nine years elapsed before another Congress was 
convened, the colonists had the consciousness of a sov- 
ereignty latent within themselves ; they had before them 
the precedent of a political assembly emanating directly 
from the people, criticising and condemning the acts of 
King and Parliament, issuing remonstrances and appeals 
to the people and the government of Great Britain, and 
proposing terms of future concord; in a word, exercis- 
ing the functions of a distinct political power. With this 
precedent in view, they felt, that, in any emergency, they 
could again summon this power of the united people to 
give such counsel, and take such action, as their common 



10 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

welfare should demand ; and when at length, in 1774, a 
Continental Congress was again invoked, though this body 
set before it as the chief object of its labors "the union of 
Great Britain and the Colonies on a constitutional founda- 
tion," yet, in the very fact of summoning a bod}^ of their 
own creation to treat with the parent-country of such 
questions as union, obedience, allegiance, the instinct of 
the colonists was leading them to the recognition of a 
power as yet incorporeal and indefinable, — the sovereignty 
of the nation. When this Congress put forth the resolve, 
that "the inhabitants of the English Colonies in North 
America ... are entitled to life, liberty, and property, 
and they have never ceded to any sovereign power what- 
ever a right to dispose of either without their consent ; " 
and, further, " that they are entitled to a free and exclu- 
sive power of legislation in their several provincial legisla- 
tures," — then this nascent sovereignty had already taken 
on its positive form. The "Declaration of Rights" in 
1774 was the herald of the " Declaration of Independ- 
ence " in 1776 : it needed only that this last magic word 
should be spoken, and a new nation stood unveiled before 
the world, equipped with territory, with unity, and with 
sovereignt} r . 

This nation must needs pass through a baptism of fire 
and blood before she could wear unchallenged on her 
brow the name The United States of America. More than 
five years of war, and seven years of nominal hostilities, 
before, in September, 1783, the independence of these 
United States shall be recognized by Great Britain; 
nearly thirteen years of political experiment and uncer- 
tainty, before, in March, 1789, the republic shall be defini- 
tively established under a Constitution, ' with George 
Washington as its first president: yet the nation came 
into being on that fourth day of July, 1776, when the 
Continental Congress at Philadelphia issued the Declara- 
tion of Independence. That Declaration was put forth 
with the utmost deliberation, dignity, and solemnity. 
The representatives who signed it, " in the name and by 
the authority of the good people of the Colonies," pledged 
to each other " their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred 
honor ;" and for the motives of their action, and the rec- 



GROUNDS AND MOTIVES OF THE REVOLUTION. H 

titude of their intentions, they appealed to " a candid 
world" and to "the Supreme Judge of the > world." The 
independence they then declared, and the nation that they 
brought to consciousness by that Declaration, have stood 
for a hundred years. 

I have dwelt thus minutely upon the essential attributes 
of a nation, because in the fact that the colonists had 
grown to be a nation is given a justification of the Revolu- 
tion, and because, also, in this fact is given a conclusive 
answer to the pretended "right of secession," under which 
was organized the rebellion of the Southern States in 1861. 
That plea was, that the Union was a compact of several 
independent sovereignties, and that any or all of these 
could at any time withdraw from the compact, renounce 
the paramount sovereignty of the Union, and fail back 
upon its original independence as a power, or enter into 
new compacts with other powers according to its pleasure. 
But the original thirteen Colonies became independent 
States only through their union : it was a Congress repre- 
senting "the good people of the Colonies" that proclaimed 
the fact of independence. 1 The nation existed long before 
the Constitution, which it made for a more perfect realiza- 
tion of its inherent and essential unity and sovereignty ; 
the nation existed years before the Articles of Confedera- 
tion, which were a crude attempt to give expression to 
that unity and sovereignty, under the pressure of the 
Revolutionary war ; and the nation existed before the 
Declaration of Independence, by which it declared its own 
consciousness, and challenged the recognition of the 
world. 2 The nation might be rent in twain by civil war, 
or be robbed of a portion of its territory and people by 
conquest; and it is even conceivable that the nation, 
acting of its free-will and in its entirety, — in view of the 
vastness of its territory or its population, or of certain 

1 The Declaration reads, "We, the representatives, &c, . . . do, in the 
name and by the authority of the good people of these Colonies, solemnly 
publish and declare, that these united Colonies are, and of right ought to 
he, free and independent States." Many of the members of this Congress 
had been elected directly by conventions of the people. 

2 By the preamble to the Declaration, it was a " people " — not a confed- 
eration of governments, but a people — that dissolved the political bonds 
which had connected them with another, and assumed "a separate and 
equal station" — that is, as a distinct nation — " among the powers of the 
earth." The nation lay back of all forms of political organization. 



12 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

features of its physical geography, — might deem it wise to 
portion off a section of itself as a separate political com- 
munity, for greater convenience or efficiency of govern- 
ment. But "right of secession" there is and can be 
none. To admit such a right would be to put into each 
and every constituent of the nation the means of the 
political suicide of the whole body. The nation is not a 
group of distinct commonwealths held together by a rope 
of sand : it is a people, a living organism, having in itself 
the inalienable and indivisible functions and attributes of 
life. Such a nation is the people of the United States 
of America. The training which fitted that people to be 
a nation, and necessitated their independence as soon as 
their right of local self-government was assailed, is a study 
in political philosophy which more and more attracts the 
publicists and statesmen of Europe. Thirty years ago, 
Alexis de Tocqueville advised his countrymen to look to 
America, not in order to make a servile copy of the insti- 
tutions which she has established, but to gain a clearer 
view of the polity which would be best for France ; to look 
to America less to, find examples than instruction ; to bor- 
row from her the principles, rather than the details, of her 
laws, — those principles of order, of the balance of powers, 
of true liberty, of deep and sincere respect for right, 
on which the American Constitution rests. 1 Prof, von 
Hoist of the University of Freiburg, having spent five 
years in the United States in the diligent study of their 
political history and institutions, is now seeking to promote 
that study in Germany, where correct and philosophical 
knowledge of American society is so sadly wanting. 2 
And Mr. Gladstone has lately said of the independence of 
the United States of America, 3 " The circumstances of the 
war which yielded that result, the principles it illustrates, 
and the remarkable powers of the principal men who took 
part, whether as soldiers or citizens, in the struggle, . . . 
constitute one of the most instructive chapters of modern 
history ; and I have repeatedly recommended them to 
younger men as subjects of especial study." 

1 Democracy in America, Preface to twelfth edition. 1.848. 

2 Verfassmui unci Demokratie tier Vereinigien Star.; en von Arnerika, 
von Dr. H. v. Hoist : Busseldorf , 1873. 

3 Reply to invitation to the Lexington centenary. 



GROUNDS AND MOTIVES OF THE REVOLUTION. 13 

A leading journal of London, having no partiality for 
the United States, also says, " The Revolution which gave 
birth to the United States, in some respects may be re- 
garded, even more than the French Revolution, as the 
starting-point of modern history. It was the first example 
of a nation completely breaking loose from its position as 
part of the old historic world of Christendom, starting for 
itself on entirely new ground, and trusting to its inherent 
power of organization. . . . We have lived thenceforth in 
a larger sphere, physically, socially, and politicall} T ." * 

Now, the American Revolution could never have at- 
tained to this dignity and power, nor have so commanded 
the respect of statesmen and philosophers for its benefits to 
mankind, had it been only or chiefly a revolt against the 
payment of a tax. It is true that the Stamp Act and 
other oppressive impositions were the occasion of rousing 
in the American Colonies the spirit of resistance to the 
authority of Great Britain: yet it was not the tax as 
money, but the mode of levying the tax, that they resisted ; 
it was not the pocket that was touched, but the principle, 
s by whose authority the pocket should be opened. 

" The Saturday Review " speaks of the American Revo- 
lution as a " wanton and needless rebellion : " " needless," — 
that is, without basis or plea of necessity to justify it; 
"wanton," — that is, reckless, without reason or motive, 
without regard to right, to methods, or to consequences. 
I quote this characterization of one of the greatest politi- 
cal and moral events of modern history simply to raise 
the question, whether there exists in England a class of 
persons of sufficient intelligence to read " The Saturday 
Review," and yet of sufficient stupidity to be imposed 
upon by such flippant phrases. 2 To " The Westminster 
Review," however, one looks for candor, intelligence, and 
a fair degree of sound and accurate knowledge of the 
subjects of which it treats. Yet even "The Westminster" 
is betrayed into a strange misapprehension of the issue 
between the Colonies and the mother-country. " It has 
been well pointed out," says this review, " that the prin- 
ciple involved in the war of independence was scarcely 

1 London Times, May 5, 1875. 

2 Notice of the Life of Alexander Hamilton, May 27, 1876. 



14 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

whether taxation was only just where representation had 
been conceded, but whether the two hundred and forty 
million pounds sterling which had been spent by England 
in defence of her American Colonies from the French in- 
vasions from Canada should not, in some measure, be 
borne by the Colonies in whose interest the war had been 
undertaken, and for whose benefit the struggle had been 
prosecuted to a successful issue." * 

Had the writer taken pains to consult the journals of 
the House of Commons, and especially the journal of 
Franklin's examination before the House, or the speeches 
of Burke, he could not have fallen into so mischievous an 
error. Of Franklin's testimony I shall speak by and by. 
But here is the official record of the House of Commons : 
On the 28th January, 175G, a message was received from 
the king, that " His Majesty, being sensible of the zeal and 
vigor with which his faithful subjects of certain Colonies 
in North America have exerted themselves in defence of 
his Majesty's just rights and possessions, recommends it to 
this House to take the same into their consideration, and 
to enable his Majesty to give them such assistance as may 
be a proper reward and encouragement." On the 3d Feb- 
ruary following, the House voted one hundred and fifteen 
thousand pounds as a recompense to the Colonies, in almost 
the words of the royal message. This was in the second 
year after the outbreak of the so-called " French and 
Indian " or " Old French " war. This war continued for 
nine years, and was at last terminated by the Treaty of 
Paris, Feb. 10, 1763. Now, in each and every year of that 
war, the journal of the House of Commons bears witness, 
that, on recommendation of the crown, the House made 
an appropriation to reimburse the Colonies for their excess 
of outlay in a war that was not simply in their own 
defence, but for the rights of the crown in America. 2 

The Colonics did not begin the French war. The ques- 
tion of the boundary of Nova Scotia did not directly 
concern them ; and the forts built by the French in the 

1 Our Colonial Empire: Westminster Review, April, 1876. 

2 See Journal, vol. xxvii., 28th January and 3d February, 175P>, lfith 
and 19th May, 1757; vol. x::viii.. June 1, 175S, April 2Gth and 30th, 1759, 
March 26th and 31st, April 28, 1760, Jan. Cth and 20th, 17G1; vol. xxix., 
Jan. 22d and 2Gth, 17G2, March 14th and 17th, 1703. 



GROUNDS AND MOTIVES OF THE REVOLUTION. 15 

valley of the Mississippi, though, they might eventually 
menace the Colonies, did not encroach upon the actual set- 
tlements, but upon territory claimed by Great Britain. 
The king's speech at the opening of Parliament, Nov. 13, 
1755, recognizing the state of war, said, " Since your last 
session, I have taken such measures as might be conducive 
to the protection of our possessions in America, and to the 
regaining of such posts thereof as had been encroached 
upon or invaded, in violation of the peace, and contrary to 
the faith of the most solemn treaties." 1 

In November, 1754, in the debate on the Address on 
the King's Speech, Mr. W. Beckford, M.P., said, " If we 
attack the French anywhere by land, let it be in America, 
where we are sure of the utmost assistance our Colonies 
can give, without subsidy or reward ; for though we have 
for several years treated them in such a manner that they 
have some reason to be indifferent whose power they may 
hereafter fall under, yet I am sure they will all join heartily 
with us in driving the French as far as possible from their 
confines." 2 And the senior Horace Walpole, who bore us 
no sympathy, said, " I was glad to hear that our Colonies 
were able to support themselves. I therefore hope they 
will not stand in need of much assistance from us ; but, if 
they shoidd, we must give it. Even for them we must 
fight as if we were fighting pro aris et focis ; for it is 
to them we owe our wealth and our naval strength." 3 
Surely, then, the Colonies were under no so great obliga- 
tion to the mother-country for "protection." 

In April, 1759, his Majesty "recommends to the consider- 
ation of the House the zeal and vigor with which his faith- 
ful subjects of North America had exerted themselves in 
defence of his just rights and possessions; desiring he 
might be enabled to give them a proper compensation for 
the expenses incurred by the respective provinces in levy- 
ing, clothing, and paying the troops raised in that country, 
according as the active vigor and strenuous efforts of the 
several Colonies should appear to merit." 4 And the jour- 
nal records an appropriation of £ -200,000 as a "proper 
compensation to the Provinces for the expenses incurred 

i Hansard, xv. 527. 2 End., xv. 358. 3 ibid., xv. 365. 
4 See in Hansard, vol. xv. p. 93J). 



16 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

in levying and maintaining troops for the service of the 
public." 1 

On the 28th April, 1759, the House made a special 
appropriation of £2,977 "for reimbursing to the Colony 
of New York their expenses in furnishing provisions and 
stores to the troops raised by them for his Majesty's ser- 
vice for the campaign in 1756." 

In 17G0, on the 31st March, in the vote of supplies as 
given by Hansard, is this peculiar form : " Upon account, 
to enable his Majesty to give proper compensations to the 
Provinces in North America for the expenses they had 
incurred in levying, clothing, and paying the troops raised 
by them, according as the active vigor and strenuous efforts 
of the respective Provinces shall be thought by his Majesty 
to merit." The sum granted was £ 200,000. Thus far 
under George II. George III. came to the throne Oct. 
25,1760; and the journal bears witness, in the same 
terms as above quoted, that on Jan. 20, 1761, £200,000, 
on Jan. 25, 1762, £133,333. 6j. 8cZ., and on March 17, 1763, 
a like sum, were voted as a compensation to the Colonies. 2 

Burke called attention to these facts in his famous 
speech on Conciliation with America, and said with just 
emphasis, "The Colonies, in general, owe little or noth- 
ing to airy care of ours." In a speech in the Massachu- 
setts legislature, Sept. 8, 1762, James Otis said, " This 
Province has, since the year 1754, levied for his Majesty's 
service, as soldiers and seamen, near thirty thousand men. 
One year in particular, it was said that every fifth man 
was engaged in one shape or another. We have raised 
sums for the support of this war that the last generation 
could hardly have formed any idea of." Such were the 
facts. " The Westminster Review " says, " The question 
was, whether the cost of defending the Colonies from the 
French should not be borne by the Colonies." The King 
and Parliament, on the contrary, year by year, recognized 
the fact that the Colonies had freely borne the cost of levy- 
ing and paying troops to serve against the French, and 
had so far exceeded their fair proportion of this expense 
as to deserve compensation from the royal treasury. u The 

i See in Hansard, vol. xv. p. 937. 
2 Ibid., vol. xv. pp. 1003, 1214, seq. 



GROUNDS AHD MOTIVES OF THE EE VOLUTION. 17 

Westminster Review " says that the war was undertaken 
for the interest of the Colonies." But the King and Parlia- 
ment felt that the Colonies were assisting England in her 
war with France ; were fighting for " the service of the 
public," and " in defence of his Majesty's just rights and 
possessions." Surely money voted in gratitude as a " com- 
pensation" and "reward" for zealous and vigorous volun- 
tary services and sacrifices on the part of the Colonies 
could not afterward be made a ground of taxing the Colo- 
nies for expenses incurred in their defence. The fact was, 
that the resources displayed by the Colonies in their own 
defence excited the envy and cupidity of a later ministry ; 
and, when the fear of France was removed, it was felt that 
pressure could safely be applied to the Colonies for extort- 
ing a revenue for the crown. Hitherto the Colonies had 
made grants to the crown through their own legislatures : 
now they were to be directly taxed by Parliament. This 
was expressly declared in the preamble to the act levying 
a duty on tea ; and Burke pithily said, " It is the weight 
of that preamble, and not the weight of the duty, that 
Americans are unable and unwilling to bear." This it 
was that led Otis to assert it as a right of the British 
Colonies, that " taxes are not to be laid on the people, but 
by their consent in person, or by deputation." 1 

I have dwelt thus long upon this point, first, because of 
the respectable character of the review that has been be- 
trayed into this singular error ; and, next, because I see 
not how it is possible for Englishmen to be correctly in- 
formed concerning this important period not only of 
American history, but of their own, so long as the record of 
the doings of their own government is kept from view, 
and quite another version of the facts is given by journals 
in which they are accustomed, and ordinarily with good 
reason, to confide. 

" What do we mean by the American Revolution ? " 
asks John Adams. "Do we mean the American war? 
The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. 
The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people, 

1 See pamphlet on the Eights of the British Colonies Asserted and 
Proved ; first read by Otis to the Massachusetts legislature, then pub- 
lished by him in 1764. 



18 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

— a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and 
obligations. . . . Believing allegiance and protection to be 
reciprocal, when protection was withdrawn they thought 
allegiance was dissolved." 1 The American Colonies had 
no quarrel with the English nation, of which they were 
proud to be a part. The British ministry had itself to 
thank for American independence. The English people 
have America to thank for the conservation of their own 
popular and local freedom, and for their present colonial 
policy. Parliament now seeks to force upon the Colonies 
that self-administration for which we fought. 

The colonists had taxed themselves freely, largely; had 
maintained their government, their schools, their colleges, 
their churches, at their own cost, without grants from the 
royal treasury ; 2 had taxed themselves to equip a militia ; 
and at their own charges had fought with and for England 
against Spain, France, and the Indians : but the attempt 
to tax them directly from England, thus over-riding the 
local legislatures, and ignoring the settled principle of tax- 
ation in the English Constitution, they resisted in the very 
spirit in which the English Commons had once and again 
stood out against the usurpations of the crown. They 
were not mercenary, nor niggard ; the necessities of the 
primitive colonists had left the impress of frugality upon 
the habits of the people : but when, to cover the deficien- 
cies of his budget, the British king sought to convert 
their thriftiness into a source of revenue to the crown, 
their notion of money and its uses showed itself in the say- 
ing, " Millions for defence, but not one cent for tribute." 
The king was encroaching upon the rights and liberties 
which their fathers had brought from England, and which 
they themselves had always enjoyed either by charter or 
by custom : he was subverting the people's prerogative of 
local government. At some point they must make a stand, 
and it might as well be at the stamp-tax or the tea-tax as 
at any other act of usurpation. 

" Who steals my purse steals trash." Yes, but he is 
none the less a thief; and he who steals my purse would 

1 Works, vol. x. 282, 283. 

2 With the exception of Georgia, whose civil list was a small party-tax 
on Parliament. 



GROUNDS AND MOTIVES OF THE REVOLUTION. 1Q 

"filch from me my good name," and might even take my 
life to steal my purse. This royal robber of rights, if un- 
resisted, would soon have taken all ; and the moral of the 
resistance is not dwarfed by its being made when he laid 
violent hands upon the purse. Man has a right in his own 
property, just as he has a right in his life, in his home, in 
his intelligence, in his conscience ; and when either of 
these rights is arbitrarily seized, or stealthily encroached 
upon, he must strike for this, or he will lose the whole. 
And Schiller has taught us that "no one can surrender a 
hair's-breadth of his own rights, without at the same time 
betraying the soul of the whole State;" and "chains, 
whether of steel or silk, are chains." 1 

I grant, indeed, that one watchword of the Revolution 
— " No taxation without representation " — has a metallic 
sound, — a sound less noble than the demand of the people 
in Germany to be represented in the government, because 
every man may be called, at any time, to give his life for 
his fatherland. But the philosophical view that Mr. 
Burke took of the resistance of the colonists to the Stamp 
Act relieves them of the semblance of rating money above 
life in a contest for the right of the people to a parliament 
of their own. "Liberty," said Burke, "inheres in some 
sensible object; and every nation has formed to itself 
some favorite point, which, by way of eminence, becomes 
the criterion of its happiness. It happened that the great 
contests for freedom in this country were, from the earliest 
times, chiefly upon the question of taxing. Most of the 
contests in the ancient commonwealths turned primarily 
on the right of election of magistrates, or on the balance 
among the several orders of the State. The question of 
money was not with them so immediate. But in England 
it was otherwise. On this point of taxes the ablest pens 
and most eloquent tongues have been exercised; the 
greatest spirits have acted and suffered. . . . They took 
infinite pains to inculcate as a fundamental principle, that, 
in all monarchies, the people must, in effect, themselves 
mediately or immediately possess the power of granting 
their own money, or no shadow of liberty could subsist." 2 

1 Die Verschworung des Fiesco zu Genua, iv. G and iii. 5. 

2 Speech on Conciliation with America. 



20 CEXTEXXIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

It was on this fundamental principle that John Hampden 
planted himself when he refused to pay the trifling sum 
in which he was assessed for " ship-money." To one of 
Hampden's station and fortune a rate of thirty-one shil- 
lings and sixpence was ridiculously small : but the rate 
had been levied by the king without the authority of Par- 
liament, and was enforced by distraint of goods and per- 
sons ; and sq Hampden refused to pay his thirty-one shil- 
lings and sixpence, took his appeal to the law against the 
crown, roused the country to resistance to arbitrary taxa- 
tion, and finally established the entire and undisputed con- 
trol of Parliament over the supplies, which his biographer 
characterizes as " the stoutest buttress of the English Con- 
stitution." ! 

The mind of Luther had loner been struggling toward 
the light : his heart, distracted with its own conflicts, had 
seized the promise, " The just shall live by faith." His visit 
to Rome had been a fearful shock to his ideal of the glory 
and sanctity of the Church in her capital; but so long as 
his experiences were purely subjective, and his meditations 
speculative, though he might be preparing to follow his 
beloved Augustine and Tauler as theologian and preacher, 
he had not felt the impulses of the popular reformer, nor 
thought of projecting the inner conflict of his soul into the 
outer sphere of conflict and revolt against the Church of 
Rome. It was the concrete, tangible fact of the open sale 
of indulgences, the traffic of the Church in sins and 
pardons, that roused Luther first to protest and remon- 
strance, and then to defiance and independence ; and it 
was this attempt of the Italian hierarchy to extort from 
the Germans money for St. Peter's by hawking their souls 
that gave Luther power with the people against the Pope. 
His revival of the doctrine of "justification by faith " 
might have caused a controversy in the schools ; but this 
mercenary greed of Rome roused a nation to assert its 
independence of the Papal power. Faith and freedom, 
stirring in thousands of hearts, and latent in thousands 
more, found an outlet in resistance to this w ' Stamp Act " 
of Leo X., by which that most precious of all things, the 
redemption of the soul, was to be had by buying a strip 

1 Memorials of John Ilampileu, by Lor J Nugent. 



GROUNDS AND MOTIVES OF THE REVOLUTION. 21 

of paper bearing a remission stamped with the pontiff's 
name. The act of George III. required that kt all deeds 
and receipts and other legal documents should be writ- 
ten or printed on stamped paper, and that this paper 
should be sold by the tax-collectors ; " and we have the 
authority of Erasmus, that " the remission of purgatorial 
torment was not only sold, but forced upon those who 
refused it." l 

We are not, then, to judge a great movement simply by 
the watchwords of the hour : these catch the ear of the 
people, and rouse their passions for the conflict ; the}^ put 
in concrete form some vital fact or principle, commonly 
overstated in the heat of controversy or the intensified 
language of proverb. But, if the movement is really great 
and lasting, it will be found that back of it lie a history 
and a philosophy that reach to the profoundest sources of 
human action. Hence, as Ranke argues, it was not a for- 
tuitous circumstance that the Reformation was, in the first 
instance, an attack upon the abuses practised in the matter 
of indulgences. The conversion into an outward traffic of 
that which was most essentially a concern of the inward 
man was of all things the most diametrically opposite to 
the conceptions drawn from the profoundest German 
theology. Hence nothing could be more shocking and 
repulsive than the system of indulgences to a man like 
Luther, with a deep and lively sense of religion, filled with 
the notions of sin and justification as they had been 
expressed in books of German theology before his time, 
and strengthened in these views by the Scriptures, which 
he had drunk in with a thirsty heart. 2 As the springs of 
the German Reformation lay deeper than resistance to 
the sale of indulgences, so the springs of the American 
Revolution lay deeper than resistance to arbitrary taxa- 
tion ; and as in Germany there were reformers before the 
Reform atiou, so in the American Colonies there were 
defenders of the right of popular government long before 
the battle of Lexington had made that a question to be 
decided at the cannon's mouth. 

To find the original sources of the American Revolution, 

1 Prref. I., Epist. Corinth., opera vii. 851. 

2 Ranke' s History of the Popes: Introduction, chap. ii. 






22 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

we must go back to English customs, precedents, and 
institutions hoary with antiquity ; must go back beyond 
the history of Saxons and Angles upon the soil of Britain : 
and those who are wont to sneer at the American Republic 
as a thing of accident, an experiment without a history, 
may be shamed, if not edified, by the teaching of history, 
that the tap-root of that self-government for which Amer- 
ica revolted against Britain was in that primitive local 
government Of the Teutonic race, which for long was lost 
in Germany through the usurpations of petty princes; 
which, however, had been transplanted to England, and 
there thrived under more favoring conditions, but which 
had well-nigh been lost in Britain also, had not the Colo- 
nies, with an offshoot of that principle invigorated by a 
virgin soil, startled Britain into the consciousness of her 
own decaying liberty by the vital force of theirs. 

The colonists did not resist with violence a taxation 
which was to them illegal ; they did not draw blood to 
save money : with a steady, united, but peaceable front, 
they opposed one extortion after another as an encroach- 
ment upon their right of local government. But, when a 
blow was struck at the foundation of that right, they took 
up arms, not against taxes, but against tyranny. On the 
first page of the American Revolution it is written, in lines 
of blood, that the town-meeting made the Revolution, — 
made it in self-defence, for its own right of existence. 

Now, what was this " town-meeting," that dared go to 
war with a kingdom ? — this little democracy of New-Eng- 
land yeomen, that on the 19th of April, 1775, drawn up 
on the village green of Lexington, faced twelve times 
their number of British regulars, and took and gave back 
their fire? It was the old Anglo-Saxon " town-moo*," the 
open assembly of the freemen of the village or the 
borough, where questions of local government were 
mooted, — debated, and decided by vote. Here and there 
in England is still pointed out a " moot-hill," — the hill of 
meeting, — where such local assemblies, legislative and judi- 
cial, were held in the open air. And what was this Anglo- 
Saxon " town-moot " but that free assembly of the people 
for choosing their rulers, and making and executing their 
laws, which Tacitus describes as the political constitution 



GROUNDS AND MOTIVES OF THE REVOLUTION. 23 

of the Teutonic race? "The Germans," says Tacitus, 
" choose their kings on account of their nobility, their 
leaders on account of their valor. On smaller matters the 
chiefs debate, on greater matters all men, but so that 
those things whose final decision rests with the whole 
people are first handled by the chiefs. ... It is lawful 
also in the assembly to bring matters for trial, and to bring 
charges of capital crimes. ... In the same assembly, 
chiefs are chosen to administer justice through the dis- 
tricts and villages." 1 This principle of governing directly 
by the whole body of freemen in council assembled, the 
Teutonic constitution carried out to the farthest practicable 
subdivision of the body politic ; viz., the Landesgemeinde. 
Concerning this seat of local sovereignty, a modern Eng- 
lish publicist has observed, that, " in this earliest stage of 
Teutonic society, we find self-government in its most abso- 
lute and most uncompromising form. The Greek ideal of 
a perfectly free State, of every citizen of which it can be 
said that he governs and is governed, — upyuv xal apxsodcu, 
— is realized. Society and the State are exactly contermi- 
nous with each other: neither overlaps the other. Social 
rights are exactly balanced by public duties, public duties 
by social rights. The franchise of the old Teutonic com- 
munity is the amount of public work done on behalf of the 
community. In a political society of this kind, it is clear 
that there is no room for even a rudiment of representative 
government. Society itself does the work of the State, and 
does not delegate it to others." 2 Upon this political unit — 
" the true kernel," as Mr. Freeman calls it, " of all our politi- 
cal life" — was formed in the Teutonic constitution a repre- 
sentative system through a series of delegated assemblies ; 
and the primitive political structure of England was formed 
in this manner, not by division from above downwards, 
but by union and growth from beneath upwards. In 
short, the fundamental conception of the State was society 
exercising its political functions, or local government, — ■ 
that which Pres. Lincoln, in his home-bred philosophy, 
styled " the government of the people, by the people, and 

1 Tacitus de Moribus Germanise, c. 7-13. See also Freeman's Growth 
of the English Constitution, chap. i. 

2 R. B. D. Morier: Cobden-Club Essays, third series, p. 3G5. 



24 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

for the people." 1 This was town-meeting government; 
for in the town-meeting every freeman had not only his 
vote, but his word ; and to many a man to have his say, or, 
as my good mother used to phrase it, to give a piece of his 
mind, is a far higher privilege than to elect others to 
office, or even to be elected himself. The New-England 
town-meeting had retained intact and untarnished the 
three essential rights of the Landesr/emeinde of our Teu- 
tonic ancestors, — to talk, to vote, and, when meddled with, 
to fight. But the great glory of the American* colonists 
is, that, while they recovered to political society that 
primitive institution of local government — the village 
council — which was the common heritage of the Aryan 
race in its wide dispersion, they showed how, without 
sacrificing any of the essentials of liberty, this simple 
democracy, of Nature, the source and the last refuge of 
true popiilar liberty, could be made to harmonize with, and 
even give stability to, that grand creation of modern civil- 
ization, — the nation with its oneness of interests and 
powers, its common consciousness, and its continuity of 
historical development. This was the rich and weighty 
contribution of the American Revolution to political 
science and the welfare of mankind. 

The first tendency of civilization is in the direction of 
an apostasy from liberty. In every union for common 
ends, each individual must surrender somewhat of the 
personal to the good of the whole. Now, civilization calls 
for union, for the combination of interests through the 
concession of particulars. Civilization calls also for 
strength, in order to its own development and stability, 
and, it may be, strength for the protection of liberty 
itself. But there is danger always that this combination 
shall result in the absorption of the individual, this strength 
be perverted to the subverting of liberty. In Germany 
this process was insidious and gradual : first, the kingship 
grew from a personal superiority in honor to an official 
supremacy of power ; next, the chief servants of the king 
grew to be great territorial lords, and, as princes, usurped 
to themselves local possession and rule; then followed 
hereditary estates, crystallizing society into castes. Cities 

i Speech at Gettysburg, Nov. 19, 1863. 



GROUNDS AND MOTIVES OF THE REVOLUTION 25 

and leagues preserved the old principle of self-gov- 
ernment and association; and the Hundred Court long 
survived as the unit of Teutonic freedom. The Thirty- 
Years' war swept away the ancient landmarks ; and from 
that flood emerged the organized absolutism that stood for 
government, and the privileged classes that constituted 
the State. In England, happily, the transition from the 
old Anglo-Saxon forms, with their local political units, to 
the consolidated unity of the kingdom after the Norman 
conquest, was accomplished without the annihilation of 
local self-government; and this survived in charters and 
franchises held by boroughs, municipalities, and trade- 
guilds. Moreover, under the new order of things, by 
which government became concentrated in and around the 
throne, the principle of popular government emerged in 
the House of Commons, which asserted the right of origi- 
nating all financial measures, and of voting all taxes and 
supplies. 

These two principles, then, — that of distributive self- 
government, and that of taxation only with consent of the 
taxed, — were thoroughly English. As far back as the reign 
of Edward III., in the fourteenth century, the Commons 
scrupled to tax their constituents without their consent, 
and refused also to grant supplies without pledges and 
concessions from the king. The same course was pursued 
under Henry IV. ; and the Commons also appointed treas- 
urers of their own to see that the supplies voted to the 
king were used in a proper and lawful way. More than 
once, the Commons made a stand against the arbitrary 
demands of Henry VIII. with regard to supplies to the 
crown. The greatly increased revenue of the crown 
under Elizabeth was due to the free grants of the Com- 
mons ; and, when Charles I. attempted to revive the levy- 
ing of new customs and imposts by royal prerogative, the 
Commons made that memorable stand for the control of 
the public purse by the people, through their representa- 
tives, that cost the wilful king, first his crown, and after- 
wards his head. This principle, then settled in England 
by statute forever, — that the branch of government that 
most directly represents the people shall regulate the 
taxes, and vote the supplies, — is now incorporated with 



26 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

every constitutional government ; and thus English liberty 
has become a precedent and standard for the civilized 
world. But parliaments are not always mindful of the 
principles and precedents from which their own rights and 
powers have sprung ; and a centur}^ ago it happened in 
England that a capricious and wilful king found a minis- 
try and parliament pliant enough to use the right of tax- 
ing, which parliament had wrested from the crown, in the 
unconstitutional way of taxing the American Colonies 
without their consent, — thus dealing a blow at the right 
of local government, upon which rested the rights of the 
people as represented in the House of Commons itself; and 
that was the blow that roused the colonists to the danger 
of losing all their rights as Englishmen by acquiescing in 
a tax levied without consulting the legislative bodies 
chosen by themselves. 

During the long period of remonstrance that pre- 
ceded the appeal of the colonists to arms, FRANKLIN, 
whose sagacity as a statesman equalled his wisdom as 
a philosopher, was in England, watching for the interests 
of the Colonies against the usurpations of the Crown 
and the Parliament. In a letter to Lord Karnes, dated 
London, April 11, 1767, Franklin says, " All the Colonies 
acknowledge the king as their sovereign. His govern- 
ors there represent his person ; laws are made by their 
assemblies, or little parliaments, with the governor's assent, 
subject still to the king's pleasure to affirm or annul 
them. Suits arising in the Colonies, and between Colony 
and Colony, are determined by the king in council. In 
this view they seem so many separate little States, subject 
to the same prince. The sovereignty of the king is, there- 
fore, easily understood. But nothing is more common here 
than to talk of the sovereignty of Parliament, and the 
sovereignty of this nation over the Colonies, — a kind of 
sovereignty, the idea of which is not so clear ; nor does it 
clearly appear on what foundation it is established." l And 
in a letter to a person unknown, dated London, Jan. 6, 
1766, Franklin protested against taxing the Colonies with- 
out their consent, by asking, " If the Parliament has a 
right thus to take from us a penny in the pound, where is 

i Bigelow's Life of Eranklin, vol. i. p. 518. 



GROUNDS AND MOTIVES OF THE REVOLUTION. 27 

the line drawn that bounds that right ? and what shall 
hinder their calling, whenever they please, for the other 
nineteen shillings and elevenpence ? Have we, then, any 
thing that we can call our own? " x 

That question went to the root of the whole matter in 
controversy. The colonists had held their own lands, 
made their own laws, elected their own magistrates, laid 
their own taxes, levied their own militia ; but, should they 
acquiesce in these new usurpations of King and Parliament, 
how long should they have any thing that they could call 
their own ? — now long, indeed, could they call themselves 
their own? In their original settlement, and forms of 
government, some of the Colonies had been more their 
own than were others. As I have already pointed out, 
some had charters which guaranteed to them the right of 
framing their own laws ; some had proprietors, who held 
from the king the title to the land, and the right of gov- 
erning; and others, again, were royal provinces, with a 
governor and council appointed by the king. It had long 
been a favorite scheme in England to assimilate all the 
Colonies to the " royal" type. But, from the very neces- 
sity of their position, the colonists were left to care for 
themselves, and hence were accustomed to act for them- 
selves ; and, long before the Revolution, the spirit of self- 
government had asserted itself in all the Colonies, through 
legislative assemblies chosen by the people, though the 
forms of local government were most fully developed in 
the chartered Colonies of New England. There, within a 
quarter of a century after the settlement of Plymouth, in 
a population of about twenty-five thousand, were already 
upwards of fifty distinct town-organizations, each of which, 
after the manner of the Saxon town-moot and the Teu- 
tonic G-emeinde, managed its own affairs by votes of the 
whole body of citizens in town-meeting. " By force of 
this institution," — as it exists to this day, — " every man 
in New England belongs to a small community of neigh- 
bors, known to the law as a corporation, with rights and 
liabilities as such, capable of suing, and subject to be sued, 
in the courts of justice, in disputes with any parties, in- 
dividual or corporate. Once a year the corporation chooses 

1 Bigelow's Life of Franklin, vol. i. p. 455. 



28 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

the administrators of its affairs, and determines the amount 
of money with which it will intrust them, and how this 
shall be raised. ... It belongs to the towns to protect the 
public health and order by means of a police ; to maintain 
safe and convenient communication about and through 
their precinct by roads and bridges; to furnish food, 
clothing, and shelter to their poor; to provide for the 
education of all their children at their common charge ; " 
in a word, " towns severally are empowered to take care 
of those interests of theirs which they respectively can 
best understand, and can most efficiently and most 
economically provide for." * 

These little democracies were not only the nurseries of 
liberty, but training-schools for the citizen in the art of 
government ; and they gave to New England her peculiar 
strength and fitness for beginning that struggle with arbi- 
trary power which led to the war of independence. Other 
Colonies that lacked this feature in their original constitu- 
tion were trained to self-government by the hardy man- 
hood and self-reliance that came of battling with the wil- 
derness and the Indians, and by the necessity of guarding 
their frontier, and of providing for needs that were neg- 
lected or postponed by a government three thousand miles 
away. Hence the oligarchy which at first existed in some 
of the Colonies more directly dependent upon the crown 
was compelled to yield to the demand for a legislative 
assembly chosen by the people, and directly cognizant of 
their wants ; while . the plan for an order of nobility — 
earls and barons — in the Carolinas never got beyond the 
paper on which John Locke draughted it for King Charles 
II. It was too late in history to set up an aristocracy in 
fever-swamps and log-huts. The men who cleared and tilled 
the soil must and would own it, and, having something they 
could call their own, would govern it as well. Even the 
existence of negro slavery stimulated this demand for 
colonial freedom, since, by a perversity of human nature, 
men will often rate their own political liberty above the 
personal liberty of their fellows. Mr. Burke pointed out 
this anomaly, that " where slaves are held in any part of 
the world, those who are free are by far the most proud 

i Palfrey's History of New England, book ii. chap. 1. 



GROUNDS AND MOTIVES OF THE REVOLUTION. 29 

and jealous of their freedom. Freedom is to them not 
only an enjoyment, but a kind of rank and privilege. . . . 
In such a case the haughtiness of domination combines 
with the spirit of freedom, fortifies it, and renders it invin- 
cible." And this sagacious observer recognized the fact, 
and sought to have Parliament recognize it also, that, by 
one cause and another, it had come to pass, that, " in all the 
Colonies, the governments were popular in a high degree ; 
some merely popular; in all, the j)opular representative 
the most weighty ; and this share of the people in their 
ordinary government never fails to inspire them with lofty 
sentiments, and with a strong aversion from whatever 
tends to deprive them of their chief importance." * 

To these political and social causes which developed 
in the colonists, and one might almost say necessitated, 
the habit of self-government, must be added religion, 
as demanding freedom of conscience, independence of 
thought, and the recognition of Christian manhood as 
higher than all forms of societ}^ and orders of government. 
It is the fashion of liberals in Europe to look upon the 
Church, and especially the clergy, as antagonistic to politi- 
cal freedom, and an obstacle to the development of modern 
society in culture ; and it is the fashion of conservatives 
in Europe to look upon popular freedom as hostile to 
religion, and destructive of the Church as a main bulwark 
of society. The experience of France before and after 
her revolution gave color to both these views. But the 
experience of the United States has been, that freedom 
had in religion a safe and sure ally ; and religion found 
her security and strength in freedom, In the movements 
in the Colonies that prepared the way for the Revolution, 
the religious spirit was a vital and earnest element. Some 
of the Colonies were the direct offspring of religious perse- 
cution in the old country, or of the desire for a larger 
freedom of faith and worship ; and so jealous were they 
of any interference with the rights of conscience, that 
their religion was fitly described as " a refinement on the 
principle of resistance, the dissidence of dissent, and the 
Protestantism of the Protestant religion." 2 And the Colo- 

1 Speedi on Conciliation with America. 

2 Burke: Speech on Conciliation. 



30 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

nies that were founded in the spirit of commercial adven- 
ture, or for extending the realm of Great Britain, became 
also an asylum for religious refugees from all nations, and, 
by the prospect of a larger and freer religious life, attracted 
to themselves the men of different races and beliefs who 
had learned to do and to suffer for their faith. There 
were the Hollanders of New Amsterdam (now New York), 
of that sturdy race that shook off the accursed yoke of 
Spain, — a peop~!e whose boast it was " that common labor- 
ers, even the fishermen who dwelt in the huts of Friesland, 
could read and write, and discuss the interpretation of 
Scripture;" 1 there were the Germans of Pennsylvania, 
who brought with them the recent memories of the Thirty- 
Years' war for the freedom of the faith ; there were the 
Swedes of Delaware, with the proud memory of their great 
Gustavus, who had saved Protestantism to German}*, and 
consecrated the Pteformation with his blood ; there were 
the Huguenots of New York and the Carolina*, who 
brought from France the life-blood of its industry and 
thrift, of its honor and its faith ; and even the Catholic 
settlers of Maryland, by the sagacity of their leader in 
procuring a chartered freedom for their own faith, had 
guaranteed an impartial protection to other forms and 
faiths than theirs. Not only in New England itself, but 
in the Presbyterian and Reformed systems south of New 
England, the Calvinistic type of theology largely predomi- 
nated ; and, say what men will of the harshness of Calvin- 
ism in some aspects, the almost arbitrary despotism that it 
imputes to God in his decrees inspires a resolute, almost 
defiant, freedom in those who deem themselves the subjects 
of his electing grace : in all things they are " more than 
conquerors," through the confidence that nothing shall be 
able to separate them from the love of God. No doctrine 
of the dignity of human nature, of the rights of man, of 
natural liberty, of social equalit}*, can create such a resolve 
for the freedom of the soul as this personal conviction of 
God's favoring and protecting sovereignty. He who has 
this faith feels that he is compassed about with everlast- 
ing love, girded about with everlasting strength ; his will 
is the tempered steel that no fire can melt, no force can 

1 Fisher: History of the Reformation, p. 2SG. 



GROUNDS AND MOTIVES OF THE REVOLUTION. 31 

break. Such faith is freedom ; and this spiritual freedom 
is the source and strength of all other freedom. 

Thus it came to pass that the religious wars and perse- 
cutions of Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 
turies were a training-school for the political independence 
of the United States of America in the eighteenth century. 
Diverse and seemingly incongruous as were the nationali- 
ties represented in the Colonies, — Dutch, French, German, 
Swedish, Scotch, Irish, English, — they had all imbibed, 
either by experience or by inheritance, something of the 
spirit of personal independence, and especially of religious 
liberty. Gustavus Adolphus designed his colony of 
Swedes for the benefit of "all oppressed Christendom." 
Penn the Quaker established Pennsylvania as " a free 
colony for all mankind," where the settlers "should be 
governed bylaws of their own making." The first charter 
of the Jerseys — which were largely peopled by Quakers, 
and Scotch and Irish Presbyterians — declared that " no 
person shall at any time, in any way, or on any pretence, 
be called in question, or in the least punished or hurt, for 
opinion in religion." And Oglethorpe's Colony of Georgia 
was founded to be a refuge for " the distressed people of 
Britain, and the persecuted Protestants of Europe : " there 
the German Moravian settled side by side with the French 
Huguenot and the Scotch Presbyterian, under the motto, 
" We toil not for ourselves, but for others." 

So in all the Colonies the diverse elements of race, of 
education, of belief, were fused in the broader elements of 
religious liberty, and regard for man, even as the diverse 
modes of political organization, begun in diverse modes and 
motives of colonial settlement, were fused in the broader 
spirit of popular representation and local government. In 
a word, the elements of fusion in the Colonies were more 
powerful, if less numerous, than the elements of rivalry 
and discord. But the crystallizing centre around which 
those elements should gather and cohere was the political 
organization of New England, the unit of which was the 
town-meeting, in which society was the state, and right 
was law. 

That organization had its perfect type in the Colony of 
the Pilgrims at Plymouth, which anticipated by more 



32 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

than a hundred and fifty years the American doctrine of 
government by the people, through equal laws made by 
themselves, and officers chosen by themselves, under a 
written covenant or constitution as the supreme and final 
authority. In that little band on " The Mayflower " were 
developed the principles of liberty, — spiritual, political, 
ecclesiastical, — with a breadth of base, a harmony of pro- 
portion, a union of justice, order, and authority, with free- 
dom, that no political philosophy has yet transcended, and 
no political society attained. That covenant which they 
framed and signed on board the vessel as she lay at anchor 
at Cape Cod, in which, " for the more orderly carrying-on 
of their affairs, by mutual consent they entered into a 
solemn combination, as a body politic, to submit to such 
government and governors, laws and ordinances, as should 
by a general consent from time to time be made choice of 
and assented unto," — that simple covenant of twenty lines, 
which has served as the model of a free constitutional 
government, has sometimes been ascribed to the accident 
of the ship being carried so far to the northward of her in- 
tended port, that the patent of settlement under which the 
voyagers sailed was made void and useless, and they were 
obliged to take measures to govern and protect themselves. 
But how came the forty-one men who signed that covenant 
by a political wisdom so far above that to be found in any 
average company of colonists or emigrants ? How came 
they, in an unexpected emergency, to frame a civil govern- 
ment so as to combine justice with equality, popular legis- 
lation with magisterial authority, personal freedom with 
the general good of the Colony ? They had acquired this 
wisdom through their experience of self-government in the 
Church, and from the teaching and training of their pastor. 
He had taught them spiritual freedom, — that Freiheit des 
Geistes that Germany won by her Thirty- Years' war, yet 
has to contend for anew in this generation. Winslow, the 
third governor of the Plymouth Colony, has left on record 
the parting words of their pastor to the Pilgrims as they 
set sail from Leyden. " He charged us before God to 
follow him no farther than he followed Christ ; and, if God 
should reveal any thing to us by any other instrument of 
his, to be ready to receive it as ever we were to receive 



GROUNDS AND MOTIVES OF THE REVOLUTION". 33 

any truth by his ministry ; for he was very confident the 
Lord had more truth and light yet to break forth out of 
his holy word. He took occasion also miserably to bewail 
the state of the reformed churches, who were come to a 
period in religion, and would go no farther than the instru- 
ments of their reformation. The Lutherans could not go 
beyond what Luther saw; for, whatever part of God's 
word he had further revealed to Calvin, they had rather 
die than embrace it ; and so, you see, the Calvinists they 
stick where he left them. A misery much to be lamented: 
for though they were precious shining lights in their 
times, yet God had not revealed his whole will to them ; 
and, were they now alive, they would be as ready to 
receive further light as that they had received. . . . For 
it is not possible the Christian world should come so lately 
out of such anti-Christian darkness, and that full perfec- 
tion of knowledge should break forth at once." x 

In these wise, liberal, and noble counsels, spiritual free- 
dom and progress are based upon the broad and enduring 
principle of allegiance to truth, the duty of the soul to 
seek for light, to accept light from whatever source, and 
to obey and follow truth above and beyond all teachers 
and authorities whatsoever. There is no basis of personal 
independence so deep and firm as this. Men so trained 
could never submit to tyranny in Church or in State. 

A like lesson in ecclesiastical freedom the Pilgrims had 
learned from their pastor, who taught that " any compe- 
tent number of believers in Christ have a right to em- 
body into a church for their mutual edification ; " that, 
" being embodied, they have a right to choose all their 
officers ; " that " no churches or church-officers whatever 
have any power over any other church or officers, to con- 
trol or impose upon them, but are all equal in their 
rights and privileges, and ought to be independent in the 
exercise and enjoyment of them." . . . " The Papists," 
said he, " place the ruling power in the pope ; the Episco- 
palians, in the bishop ; the Puritan, in the presbytery : we 
put it in the body of the congregation, the multitude, 
called the church." *But, while he insisted thus strenu- 
ously upon the completeness and the independence of the 

1 New England's Memorial, p. 407. 



34 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

loeal church, lie held also the communion of the churches 
in counsel and brotherhood, and the unity of all believers 
in the one body of Christ, the only true, spiritual, holy, 
universal church. 

In such teachings and practice was laid the foundation 
for local government in matters of immediate and personal 
concern, and also for co-operation and sympathetic unity 
in things of, the higher general welfare. Men who had 
been accustomed to choose their own spiritual teachers 
and guides, to administer the affairs of the church by 
their direct votes or by officers of their choice, were pre- 
pared to take the direction of civil government also, when 
this was thrust upon them by the necessity of their posi- 
tion. And their wise, far-sighted pastor had provided 
them for this also. He who had trained them in spiritual 
independence and ecclesiastical freedom gave them coun- 
sel how to combine the exercise of popular sovereignty 
with that dignity, order, and authority which are the true 
divine right in the State. In his farewell letter he said, 
" Whereas you are to become a body politic, using amongst 
yourselves civil government, and are not furnished with 
persons of special eminency above the rest to be chosen 
by you into office of government, let your wisdom and 
godliness appear not only in choosing such persons as do 
entirely love and will promote the common good, but also 
in yielding unto them all clue honor and obedience in their 
lawful administrations ; not beholding in them the ordina- 
riness of their persons, but God's ordinance for }-our good ; 
not being like the foolish multitude, who more honor 
the gay coat than either the virtuous mind of the man, 
or the glorious ordinance of God. But you know better 
tilings, and that the image of the Lord's power and 
authority which the magistrate beareth is honorable, in 
how mean persons soever ; and this duty you may the 
more willingly, and ought the more conscionably, to per- 
form, because you are to have them for your ordinary 
governors which yourselves shall make choice of for that 
work." 1 

A government ordered with such wisdom and goodness 
would more than realize the Republic of Plato. The 

1 New England's Memorial, p. 18. 



GROUNDS AND MOTIVES OF THE REVOLUTION. 35 

pastor of the Pilgrim Church was also the founder of the 
Pilgrim Commonwealth, though he remained in Holland, 
and died an exile from England, and a stranger to Amer- 
ica. The birthplace of that freedom, civil and religious, 
which at length incorporated itself in the United States, 
was not Lexington, nor Philadelphia, nor Yorktown, but 
Leyden ; and the father of American liberty was not 
Adams, nor Franklin, nor Henry, nor Jefferson, nor War- 
ren, nor Washington, but John Robinson, who found in his 
New Testament the warrant for freedom of conscience, 
freedom of the church, and freedom of the common- 
wealth. 

What manner of men such a discipline produced is 
read in the history of New England for generations. 
Hume sneers at the Puritan emigrants to New England as 
men " who had resolved forever to abandon their native 
country, and fly to the other extremity of the globe, 
where they might enjoy lectures and discourses of any 
length or form which pleased them;" yet in the same 
breath he gives the honest praise, that " they laid the 
foundations of a government which possessed all the 
liberty, both civil and religious, of which they found 
themselves bereaved in their native country." l 

Now, it was this very determination to hear sermons in 
the form that pleased them, and to endure sermons of an 
length, provided they were full of sound doctrine, an 
strong, clear reasoning, that showed and stamped the in- 
tellectual and moral character of the early New-England 
commonwealths. To the first settlers, sermons were spir- 
itual gymnastics. They had few books, and fewer news- 
papers ; and the sabbath service supplied the social and 
intellectual excitement of the week. I doubt if the 
world had ever seen, or can now produce, just such a yeo- 
manry as the yeomanry of New England down to the 
days of the Revolution, — so thoughtful, so earnest, so 
devout, so disciplined in manly thinking and heroic faith 
by the pulpit, at once the freest and the strongest power 
of that simple age. What that pulpit was we know from 
the sermons of Cotton, Shepard, Prince, Wise, Davenport, 
Edwards, Hopkins, Bellamy, and their peers, — preachers 

1 Hnme: History of Great Britain, chap. lii. 



36 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

who dealt with their hearers as Christians " of full age," 
who required the " strong meat " of Christian doctrine. 1 
Many of these preachers were pastors of country parishes, 
their hearers the farmers of the district, the mechanics 
and small tradespeople of the village, with here and there 
a man of books and culture ; and when we read their long 
argumentative discourses, with such lofty spiritual doctrine, 
such keen, strong logic, such nice metaphysical distinc- 
tions refined to the twentieth subdivision, such earnest, 
fervid appeals to conscience, to reason, and to Scripture, 
and remember that these sermons were preached to men 
who lived by the sweat of their brow, that the sermon 
was looked forward to on Sunday, was talked over in the 
family on Sunday evening, and with the neighbors through 
the week, we see what stuff the yeomanry of New Eng- 
land were made of, and to what manhood they were 
trained. There were drawbacks, to be sure, in every such 
community ; tares were mingled with the wheat ; there 
was a decline from the primitive vigor in morals as well as 
in faith : yet the training that the yeomanry of New Eng- 
land had mainly through her pulpit was a moral force 
that the historian must know and measure, if he would 
comprehend the spirit of American liberty, and the 
motives and forces of the American Revolution. 2 

Take an instance later down, while the old spirit of 
New England still lingered in the country towns of Mas- 
sachusetts, after the war of the Revolution had so unset- 
tled the condition of society. Read the sermons of 
Nathanael Emmons, — like a demonstration of Euclid for 
clearness of argument and closeness of reasoning, like an 
essay of Addison for polish of style, — and consider that 
such sermons were preached for fifty years to a plain 
country parish, and that Emmons lived among them till 
past ninety years, revered like an Oriental patriarch, 
obeyed almost like an Oriental sheik, and you will see 

i Heb. v. 14. 

2 It is through lack of experimental acquaintance with the type of 
piety that marked the early Puritans and Presbyterians of America, and 
also through lack of any recent experience in Germany of the pulpit as a 
stimulating and renovating force in society, that so many German writers 
on America, even the most candid and capable among them, have alto- 
gether failed to comprehend and describe American life and society. They 
have missed its most vital element, because there was nothing answering 
to it in their own consciousness. 



GROUNDS AND MOTIVES OF THE REVOLUTION. 37 

where lay the power of independent thought and action 
in New England. 1 I remember, in my boyhood, two ven- 
erable farmers of Connecticut, — the one over sixty, the 
other over ninety, — who used to stand in their shirt- 
sleeves in the sultry field, and. talk of God's sovereignty 
and. man's freedom, and things invisible and eternal, and 
quote Paul and Augustine, Calvin and Milton, in a way 
that could put a young theologue to the blush. Men who 
could discuss such themes with the scythe or the sickle 
in hand could take up the sword and the musket as sons 
of liberty, because sons of God. 

I do not exaggerate this influence of the pulpit of New 
England upon her liberties. Boston was the focus of 
resistance to the usurpations of the crown. The General 
Court of Massachusetts originated the measures that re- 
sulted in the union of the Colonies: perhaps the most 
important of these was that of " Committees of Corre- 
spondence," who should keep each Colony advised of what 
was passing in all the others, and should concert plans of 
action for the friends of freedom. Now, it was a congre- 
gational minister who proposed this idea to a leading 
patriot, and he got it from his experience in church affairs. 
In 1766, Dr. Jonathan May hew, pastor of the West Church 
in Boston, wrote to James Otis these wise and weighty 
words. Dating his letter " Lord's Day morning, June 8," 
he says, " To a good man all time is holy enough ; and 
none is too holy to do good, or to think upon it. Culti- 
vating a good understanding and hearty friendship between 
these Colonies appears to me so necessary a part of pru- 
dence and good policy, that no favorable opportunity for 
that purpose should be omitted." He then advises that 

1 Rev. Dr. N. W. Taylor told me that Dr. Emmons once preached in his 
pulpit when he was pastor of the Centre Church, New Haven. After ser- 
vice Dr. Taylor remarked, "The people listened very attentively." Dr. 
Emmons answered dryly, "People will always listen when you give them 
something worth listening to." This was not always the case, however, 
even with his own congregation at Franklin ; for, as the story goes, one hot 
summer's day, the farmers, wearied with a week of haying, grew drowsy 
under Dr Emmons's close argumentation: whereupon he came to a sud- 
den pause, which, of course, woke tliem up; when he said, "I see that 
this sermon cannot keep you awake: I have another in my pocket that I 
will give you instead." He then deliberately preached the second sermon, 
and kept them awake. And a pastor could venture to say and do such 
things who was elected and supported by the people, because he always 
did give them "something worth listening to," and they were trained to 
hear and value it. 



38 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

the General Court should issue circulars to the legislative 
assemblies of the other Colonies upon the repeal of the 
Stamp Act, and other matters, " expressing a desire to 
cement and perpetuate union among the Colonies, as per- 
haps the only means of perpetuating their liberties." He 
then adds, " You have heard of the communion of churches : 
. . . while I was thinking of this in my bed, the great use 
and importance of a communion of colonies appeared to me 
in a strong light, which led me immediately to set down 
these hints to transmit to you." This conception of some 
formal and active union of the Colonies was afterwards 
carried out by such Committees of Correspondence pro- 
posed by Massachusetts. 

This same Dr. Mayhew had made himself famous by his 
clear and bold enunciation of the doctrine of Paul con- 
cerning obedience to the civil power, as laid down in the 
thirteenth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. In a dis- 
course that was widely published, Mayhew argued that 
Paul does not teach implicit and absolute submission to 
rulers as such, but grounds the duty of obedience upon 
the end for which rulers are instituted, — the good of 
society. Hence " the apostle's argument is so far from 
proving it to be the duty of people to obey and submit to 
such rulers as act in contradiction to the public good, and 
so to the design of their office, that it proves the direct 
contrary. For if the end of all civil government be the 
good of society, if this be the thing that is aimed at in 
constituting civil rulers, and if the motive and argument 
for submission to government be taken from the apparent 
usefulness of civil authority, it follows, that, when no 
such good end can be answered by submission, there re- 
mains no argument or motive to enforce it ; and if, instead 
of this good end's being brought about by submission, a 
contrary end is brought about, and the ruin and misery 
of society effected by it, here is a plain and positive reason 
against submission in all such cases, should they ever hap- 
pen. And therefore, in such cases, a regard to the public 
welfare ought to make us withhold from our rulers that 
obedience and submission which it would otherwise be our 
duty to render to them." 1 Here was no appeal to popular 

1 Discourse concerning Unlimited Submission, &c, January, 1750. 



GROUNDS AND MOTIVES OF THE REVOLUTION. 39 

passion, no declamation about the right of revolution, but 
a sober, argumentative statement of the true relation 
between rulers and subjects. This sermon of Mayhew 
anticipated by sixteen years the doctrines of the Declara- 
tion of Independence ; and we cannot wonder that men 
trained in such political ethics were ripe for revolutionary 
measures, as their last resort against tyranny. We know 
also that books of law were in great demand in America, 
and that the works of Locke, Algernon Sidney, Milton, 
and like expounders of the rights of man, were in the 
hands of the yeomanry of New England, as well as of 
publicists in all the Colonies. 1 It was such a people, with 
such preaching and such reading, that George III. at- 
tempted to deprive of their local government. 

The assault was foreshadowed by the proposal of the 
Board of Trade to raise revenue out of the American Colo- 
nies by direct authority of the king, and by restrictions 
on American trade and manufactures, intended to keep the 
Colonies in a state of dependence upon Britain. Frank- 
lin narrates, that, in 1757, Lord Grenville, then presi- 
dent of the council, said to him, " You Americans have 
wrong ideas of the nature of your constitution : you con- 
tend that the king's instructions to his governors are not 
laws, and think yourselves at liberty to regard or disregard 
them at your own discretion. . . . But such instructions, 
so far as they relate to you, are the law of the land ; for 
the king is the legislator of the Colonies." 2 The House 
of Commons, still mindful of their own struggles with the 
royal prerogative, were unwilling to sanction this step 
toward absolutism ; but, says Franklin, " by their conduct 
towards us in 1765, it seemed that they had refused that 
point of sovereignty to the king, only that they might re- 
serve it for themselves." 3 And the attempt of Parliament 

1 Burke said of America, "In no country, perhaps, in the world, is the 
law so general a study. The profession itself is numerous and powerful; 
and in most provinces it takes the lead. The greater number of depu- 
ties sent to the Congress were lawyers. But all who read (and most do 
read) endeavor to obtain some smattering in that science. I have been told 
"by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business, after tracts of 
popular devotion, were so many books as those on the law exported to the 
plantations. The colonists have now fallen into the way of printing them 
for their own use. I hear that they have sold nearly as many of Black- 
stone's Commentaries in America as in England." — Speech on Conciliation 
with America. 

2 Bigelow's Life of Franklin, i. 366. 8 Ibid., 368. 



40 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

to over-ride the colonial legislatures by direct taxation 
roused the selfsame spirit of resistance that the Commons 
had put forth against like usurpations of the crown. To 
make laws for the Colonies, and to levy taxes upon them, 
without either consulting their own legislatures, or giving 
to the Colonies a proportionate representation in the 
national Parliament, was a violation of their charters, an 
innovation upon their long-conceded privilege of " being 
governed by laws of their own making," and, above all, 
an invasion of their fundamental rights as Englishmen, 
which must lead to their being degraded from English 
subjects to mere dependants, and finally to political serfs. 
Energetic remonstrances against this usurpation were put 
forth either by the colonial legislatures, or by their agents 
in London : and such was the vigilance of the Colonies, 
that, for a period of twelve years from 1749, they suc- 
ceeded in baffling any overt attempt upon their liberties ; 
till in 1761 the acts of trade were enforced by the Court 
of Admiralty in a way so arbitrary and insulting, that 
Boston, then the chief port, was roused to resistance, and 
James Otis made his memorable declaration, that " an act 
of Parliament against the Constitution is void." * At the 

1 The Board of Trade figures so largely in the history of this period, 
that its constitution and powers are deserving of special mention. Burke 
does not hesitate to characterize it as a political "job, a sort of gently- 
ripening hot-house, where eight members of Parliament receive salaries of 
a thousand a year, for a certain given time, in order to mature at a proper 
season a claim to two thousand" {Speech on the Economical Reform). 
This Board was a device of Charles II., formed by combining in one the 
Council for Trade and the Council for Plantations. In this form it survived 
but three or four years (1668-73); but in Kil'.j King William revived the 
Board of Trade with amplified powers, to checkmate a move in Parliament 
for bringing trade and the plantations under the more immediate control 
of that body. Though the Board was only an advisory council, it origi- 
nated much of the mischief that was brought upon the Colonies. As Pal- 
frey well remarks (vol. iv. 21), its very name "expressed what was 
intended to be the spirit of colonial administration. The Colonies were to 
be made auxiliary to English trade. The Englishman in America was to 
be employed in making the fortune of the Englishman at home." In 1721 
the Board of Trade recommended to the king a scheme for bringing the 
Colonies " under his Majesty's immediate government; " that they should 
all be put " under the government of one lord-lieutenant or captain-gen- 
eral, from whom other governors of particular provinces should receive 
their orders in all cases for the king's service. By this means a general 
contribution of men or money may be raised upon the several Colonies in 
proportion to their respective abilities." This scheme for over-riding the 
charters and legislatures of the Colonies was not then openly attempted; 
but the spirit of such usurpation was carried out in many ways. Thus in 
1733, against the remonstrance of some of the Colonies, duties were levied 
for the king upon all sugar, rum, molasses, spirits, &c, imported into the 



GItOUNDS AND MOTIVES OF THE KEVOLUTTON 41 

same time, the judges in the Colonies were made depend- 
ent upon the good pleasure of the king; that is, were 
made tools of the crown. Still the people held their 
ground. 

At length there arose a more determined and sagacious 
enemy of popular freedom than those the Colonies had 
hitherto baffled, — a minister who combined subtilty of 
invention with comprehensiveness of purpose, and energy 
of will, — Charles Townshend, first lord of trade, who 
scrupled at nothing, that he might abrogate the rights and 
privileges of the colonial assemblies, and make the 
authority of Parliament direct and absolute. Charters, 
laws, precedents, pledges, were to be set aside, and taxes 
imposed by Parliament, to be enforced, if need be, by a 
standing army. It was early in 1763 that Townshend 
broached his audacious scheme ; but not till two years 
later did the ministry and Parliament have the courage, 
rather the infatuation, to put it into effect, by the act 
requiring all business and legal documents to be written 
or printed upon stamped paper, to be had only of the tax- 
collectors. For five and twenty years this particular 
measure had been hovering in the air, — now suggested 
by some colonial governor as a quietus to the troublesome 
scrutiny of the legislature in voting supplies ; now pro- 
posed by a lord of trade or of the treasury as a direct 
and easy way of raising revenue ; again urged by the mer- 
chants of London, with a view to lessening the taxes oi; 
the empire ; but at every point watched and warded off 
by the colonists, until at last it was attempted to be forced 
upon them as a means of subjugation, a. test-measure of 
prerogative in taxation, or, at least, of 'priority in lev} T ing a 
tax. It came upon them, therefore, with all the aggrava- 

Colonies. On Feb. 10, 1749, a bill was laid before Parliament " to regulate 
and restrain paper bills of credit in the British Colonies and Plantations: " 
but Hansard reports (vol. xvi. p. 563), " As it contained a clause for subject- 
ing our Colonies and Plantations to such orders and instructions as should 
from time to time be transmitted to them from the crown, it raised a gen- 
eral opposition from our Colonies and Plantations iTpon the continent of 
America; " and the bill was finally dropped. The series of measures that 
culminated in the Stamp Act of March 6, 1765, proceeded in the line of sub- 
jecting the Colonies to the direct control of the crown, and of a parliament 
subservient to the crown; and the resistance of the Colonies was simply a 
defence of ^rights established by charter or by usage against such usur- 
pation. The English voter of to-day has reason to thank them for a stand 
that arrested royal dictation in England. 



42 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

tion of an evil so long dreaded as to be an object of hate ; 
and it came as the symbol of usurpation and tyranny. 
The Stamp Act said, in effect, " that the Americans shall 
have no commerce, make no exchange of property with 
each other, neither purchase, nor grant, nor recover debts ; 
they shall neither marry, nor make their wills, unless they 
pay such and such sums in specie for the stamps which 
must give validity to the proceedings." x Now, the Ameri- 
can people of this generation have freely imposed upon 
themselves just such taxes to meet the enormous costs of 
war. Bat in 1765 they were not asked nor suffered to 
lay stamp duties on themselves, but at every step of life, 
from the cradle to the grave, were made to feel this annoy- 
ing interference of a government in which they had no 
voice. The Stamp Act, like the late attempt to tax 
matches in England, set every house on fire. That it 
roused the mob to violent resistance is not to be wondered 
at ; yet sober friends of liberty deplored, and sought to 
check, excesses that might prejudice their cause. But 
these sober people resisted the Stamp Act : first, by agree- 
ing to trust to personal honor in matters of trade and law, 
so as to dispense with the stamped documents ; by agree- 
ing, as a measure of retaliation, to import no British goods 
for use or wear ; by banding together in remonstrances to 
Parliament and for the defence of colonial rights ; and, 
finally, by making stamp duties so odious, that no one 
could be found willing to take the office of collector. A 
stamp-officer was meaner than the publican in Judaea. 
With a guard at his beck, he slunk from public opinion. 
Through this unarmed resistance, the Stamp Act was 
repealed within a year after it was passed. That repeal 
was largely due to the personal influence of Franklin, who 
lived constantly in London as agent of the Pennsylvania 
Colony, and by correspondence and conversation with 
public men, and contributions to the press, labored to 
induce Parliament to retrace a step, that, if persisted in, 
must lead to open hostilities. At last Franklin was sum- 
moned before the House of Commons, in committee of the 
whole, to be examined touching the feelings and wishes 
of the Colonies. The examination lasted ten days. : it was 

i Bigelow's Life of Franklin, i. 671. 



GROUNDS AND MOTIVES OF THE REVOLUTION. 43 

deep and thorough, sometimes keen and hostile : but the 
wisdom, tact, knowledge, candor, boldness, of the plain 
philosopher, conquered the prejudices and the pride of 
Parliament ; and the journal of the Commons records, 
" Feb. 13, 1766, Benjamin Franklin, having passed through 
his examination, was excepted from further attendance ; " 
and, " Feb. 24, the committee reported that it was their 
opinion that the House be moved that leave be given to 
bring in a bill to repeal the Stamp Act ; " and, on the 18th 
of March, the king signed the repeal. Well did the coun- 
trymen of Franklin, in striking a medal in his honor, 
coupling his political triumphs with his triumphs over 
nature, surround his head with the legend : — 

" Eripuit ccelo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis," — " He 
drew the lightning from heaven, and wrested the sceptre 
from tyrants." 

As a specimen of the shrewdness of Franklin, take his 
last two answers to the House of Commons. 

Question. — What used to be the pride of the Ameri- 
cans ? 

Ansiver. — To indulge in the fashions and manufac- 
tures of Great Britain. 

Q. — What is now their pride ? 

Ans. — To wear their old clothes over again till they 
can make new ones. 

Those were answers that every manufacturer and trades- 
man in England could understand. Other answers display 
no less boldness than shrewdness. 

Q. — If the Stamp Act is not repealed, what do you 
think will be the consequences ? 

Ans. — A total loss of the respect and affection the 
people of America bear to this country, and of all the 
commerce that depends on that respect and affection. 

Q. — If the Stamp Act should be repealed, would it 
induce the assemblies of America to acknowledge the 
right of Parliament to tax them ? 

Ans. — No, never ! ... No power, how great soever, 
can force men to change their opinions. 

But the great value of Franldin's testimony is, that it 
caused to be spread upon the journal of the House of 
Commons a statement of the attitude of the Colonies 



44 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

toward the mother-country, that could not then he con- 
tradicted ; and that is the standing vindication of the 
Colonies in afterwards taking up arms in their defence. 
It had been urged that the stamp tax was a just method 
of recovering from the Colonies what Britain had spent on 
their account in wars with the French and Indians. This is 
the statement which has been revived by " The Westminster 
Review; " and, though I have answered it conclusively from 
the parliamentary journals of the time, I would now 
emphasize the fact, that it was refuted by Franklin before 
the House of Commons, and the refutation put on record 
at the time. 

Q. — Do you think it right that America should be pro- 
tected by this country, and pay no part of the expense f 

Ans. — That is not the case. The Colonies raised, 
clothed, and paid, during the last war, near twenty-five 
thousand men, and spent many millions. 

Q. — Were you not reimbursed by Parliament ? 

Ans. — We were only reimbursed what, in your opinion, 
we had advanced beyond our proportion, or beyond what 
might reasonably be expected from us; and it was a very 
small part of what we spent. Pennsylvania, in particular, 
disbursed about five hundred thousand pounds ; and the 
reimbursements, in the whole, did not exceed sixty thou- 
sand pounds. 

Concerning the French and Indian war, Franklin testi- 
fied, " I know the last war is commonly spoken of here as 
entered into for the defence, or for the sake, of the people 
in America. I think it is quite misunderstood. It began 
about the limits between Canada and Nova Scotia ; about 
territories to which the crown indeed laid claim, but which 
were not claimed by any British colony. None of the 
lands had been granted to any colonist : we had, therefore, 
no particular concern or interest in that dispute. . . . 
The Indian trade is a British interest ; it is carried on 
with British manufactures, for the profit of British mer- 
chants and manufacturers : therefore the war, as it com- 
menced for the defence of territories of the crown (the 
property of no American) and for the defence of a trade 
purely British, was really a British war ; and yet the people 
of America made no scruple of contributing their utmost 



GROUNDS AND MOTIVES OF THE REVOLUTION. 45 

towards carrying it on, and bringing it to a happy conclu- 
sion." 

Again be said, "America has been greatly misrepre- 
sented and abused here, in papers and pamphlets and 
speeches, as ungrateful and unreasonable and unjust, in 
having put this nation to an immense expense for their 
defence, and refusing to bear any part of that expense. 
The Colonies raised, paid, and clothed near twenty-five 
thousand men during the last war, — a number equal to 
those sent from Britain, and far beyond their proportion : 
they went deeply into debt in doing this ; and all their 
estates and taxes are mortgaged for many years to come 
for discharging that debt." 

Franklin reminded the House, that, in response to 
messages from the king, they had annually voted during 
the war two hundred thousand pounds for compensation 
to the Colonies. 1 " This is the strongest of all proofs 
that the Colonies, far from being unwilling to bear a share 
of the burden, did exceed their proportion ; for if they had 
done less, or had only equalled their proportion, there 
would have been no room or reason for compensation." 2 

There was no disputing these facts at the time. Here 
was the open testimony of King and Commons that the 
Colonies were loyal, brave, generous ; were even forward 
to tax themselves for the defence of the crown : yet King 
and Commons would now extort money from them by a 
stamp duty griping every man's purse. The Colonies had 
never been a farthing's expense to the government of 
Britain, 3 and, until their liberties were threatened, had 
never caused anxiety or trouble. As Franklin testified, 
" They submitted willingly to the government of the crown, 
and paid in their courts obedience to the acts of Parlia- 
ment. Numerous as the people are in the several old 
provinces, they cost you nothing in forts, citadels, garrisons, 
or armies, to keep them in subjection. They were gov- 
erned by this country at the expense only of a little pen, 

1 This was barely two-fifths of their actual outlay. , 

2 Hansard gives Franklin's examination nearly in full; and, in his 
report of the debate on the repeal of the Stamp Act, says, "The Colonies 
being repaid part of their debt is convincing proof that Parliament were of 
opinion they had contributed beyond their abilities" (xvi. 205). 

3 With the single exception of Georgia. 



46 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

ink, and paper : they were led by a thread. They had not 
only a respect, but an affection, for Great Britain, — for its 
laws, its customs and manners, — and even a fondness for 
its fashions, that greatly increased the commerce." Yet this 
loyal and willing people had been dealt with like aliens 
and malcontents, to be subjected by the arm of power. 

The Stamp Act was indeed repealed, but only as a 
matter of expediency, since Parliament made the fatal 
mistake of confounding a conflict of principle with a dis- 
taste for a measure of policy ; and, while repealing the 
Stamp Act, it passed a bill declaring the absolute power 
of Parliament to bind America, and thus struck a wanton 
blow at the principle of local government in the Colonies. 
Against this assumption to govern the Colonies without 
respect to their own legislatures, Franklin had distinctly 
warned the Commons, that the Colonies " think it extremely 
hard and unjust that a body of men in which they have 
no representatives should make a merit to itself of giving 
and granting what is not its own, but theirs, and deprive 
them of a right they esteem of the utmost value and impor- 
tance, as it is the security of all their other rights." In 
the parliamentary debate on the repeal of the Stamp Act, 
Pitt said, " The Commons of America, represented in their 
several assemblies, have ever been in possession of the 
exercise of this their constitutional right of giving and 
granting their own money. They would have been slaves 
if the}?- had not enjoyed it." l Camden took the same 
ground in the Lords. On this point the Colonies were 
consistent, united, and steadfast. They never shifted their 
ground, never invented pretexts for thwarting the British 
.Government, never opposed for the sake of opposing, 
never schemed for independence, never resisted on the 
score of money alone; but, having freely and loyally met 
their clues, they withstood the attempt to extort money by 
direct levies of Parliament. This identity of the question 
of taxes with the question of rights was the core of the con- 
troversy between the Colonies and Parliament : hence the 
joy at the repeal of the Stamp Act was short-lived : for it 
soon became evident that Parliament was aiming, not at 
taxation as a means of revenue, but at political subjuga- 
tion, for which enforced taxation was the ready instrument. 

i Jan. 14, 1766. Hansard, vol. xvi. 100, 



GEOUNDS AND MOTIVES OF THE KEVOLUTIOK 47 

In March, 1766, the Stamp Act was repealed. In the 
following June, Townshend, in the House of Commons, 
openly advocated the annulling of all colonial charters, and 
the substitution of a uniform government, proceeding from 
the crown, by which the local assemblies should be re- 
strained, and the royal governors, judges, and attorneys be 
rendered independent of the people ; 1 and, a year later, this 
reckless and resolute opponent of the freedom of the Colo- 
nies was the leader of the British ministry, and persuaded 
Parliament to test again its power in America by taxes 
upon sundry imports, and especially tea. 2 

That roused the women of America, whose tea-parlia- 
ments were invaded by a tax on their favorite beverage. 
In every village, in every circle, it was resolved to drink 
no tea till the tax should be repealed. The good dames 
culled the herbs of the field, dried these, and brewed from 
them a tea that could not but make them the more bitter 
against Parliament every time they tasted it. In many 
places, a decree of social exclusion was pronounced against 
any who should drink a cup of tea. The town of Lexing- 
ton resolved, " If any head of a family in this town, or any 
person, shall from this time forward, and until the duty 
be taken off, purchase any tea, or sell and consume any tea 
in their family, such person shall be looked upon as an 
enemy to this town and to his country, and shall by this 
town be treated with neglect and contempt." In a small 
village community of that day, what sentence could be 
more galling than this of being outlawed by that supreme 
court of America, — public opinion ? 

As no tea could be sold, the merchants ceased to import 
it. But the British premier said, " The king means to try 
the question with America ; " and the attempt was made 
to force tea upon the Colonies. Three tea-ships arrived in 
Boston Harbor ; but a guard of citizens refused to let them 
land their cargo. An immense meeting of the people 
called upon the governor to order the ships back to Eng- 
land : he refused ; and a band of men disguised as Indians 
went to the ships, and, in the most quiet and. orderly man- 
ner, dropped their three hundred and forty chests of tea 
into the water. This was the famous " Boston Tea-Party " 

1 See Towiishend's Speech in Bancroft, vi. 9. 2 June, 17G7. 



48 CENTENNIAL OF AMEKICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

of Dec. 16, 1773 ; and so well did the participants disguise 
themselves and their secret, that nobody was ever brought 
to account for it. Yet this mild riot brewed in England a 
fearful storm. First came, the Boston Port Bill, closing 
the port to all trade ; but other seaports refused to profit 
by the patriotic sacrifices and sufferings of Boston, and 
then restraining acts were imposed upon the commerce of 
all the Colonies. Next followed the quartering of an army 
upon the people ; and in 1774 the Regulation Acts, de- 
stroying free government and free speech. What was the 
effect of this last blow has been told by one of the clearest 
lawyers of the United States in his Centennial Address at 
Lexington: x — 

" The Regulation Acts were radical and revolutionary. 
They went to the foundations of our public system, and 
sought to reconstruct it from the base on a theory of par- 
liamentary omnipotence and kingly sovereignty. The 
councillors had been chosen by the people through their 
representatives. By the new law they were to be ap- 
pointed by the king, and to hold at his pleasure. The 
superior judges were to hold at the will of the king, and 
to be dependent upon his will for the amount and payment 
of their salaries ; and the inferior judges to be removable by 
the royal governor at his discretion, he himself holding at 
the king's will. The sheriffs were to be appointed by the 
royal governor, and to hold at his will. The juries had 
been selected by the inhabitants of the towns : they were 
now to be selected by the new sheriffs, — mere creatures of 
the royal governor. Offenders against the peace, and 
against the lives and persons of the people, had been tried 
here by our courts and juries ; and in the memorable case 
of the soldiers' trial for the firing of March, 1770, we had 
proved ourselves capable of doing justice to our enemies. 
By the new act, persons charged with capital crimes, and 
royal officers, civil or military, charged with offences in 
the execution of the royal laws or warrants, could be 
transferred for trial to England, or to some other of the 
Colonies. 

" But the deepest-reaching provision of the acts was 
that aimed at the town-meetings. They were no longer 

1 Pwichard H. Dana, jun. 



GEOUXDS AND MOTIVES OF THE EEVOLUTIOX. 49 

to be parliaments of freemen, to discuss matters of public 
interest, to instruct their representatives, and look to the 
redress of grievances. They were prohibited, except the 
two annual meetings of March and May, and were then 
only to elect officers ; and no other meetings could be held, 
unless by the written permission of the royal governor; 
and no matters could be considered, unless specially sanc- 
tioned in the permission. Am I not right in saying that 
these acts sought a radical revolution, a fundamental 
reconstruction of our ancient political system? They 
sought to change self-government into government by the 
king ; and, for home-rule, to substitute absolute rule at 
Westminster and St. James's Palace. They gave the 
royal governor and his council here powers which the 
king and his council could not exercise in Great Britain, 
— powers from which the British nobles and commons had 
fought out their exemption, and to which they would 
never submit." 

Thus far Mr. Dana. I have now established the three 
points that I laid down at the outset : (1) The American 
Colonies had no quarrel with the English nation, of which 
they would have been proud to remain an integral part ; 
(2) The British ministry had itself to thank for American 
independence ; (3) The English people owe to the Ameri- 
can Revolution no small share in the conservation of their 
own local and popular freedom against the encroachments 
of the crown, and also in that wise and liberal policy 
that now retains English Colonies within the British 
Empire. 

To enforce the subversion of local government in the 
Colonies, a British army was quartered upon the people ; 
and the first aim of its commander was to disarm the 
militia, that, under authority of their legislature, the towns 
had organized, and which had been always ready to defend 
the crown of England against foreign foes. That hand- 
ful of the men of Lexington, who, on the morning of the 
19th April, 1775, drew themselves up in military order on 
their village green to await the British regulars, repre- 
sented the town in its ancient rights of government and 
of defence. It was not liberty alone, but law, — the Eng- 
lish law of a thousand years, — that was embodied in that 



50 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

little company. The demand to lay down their arms was 
a demand to surrender the liberty of the people and the 
sovereignty of law ; and they refused. There they stood, 
— wives, children, neighbors, looking on, — sixty free- 
men upon their own soil, and that soil the little campus 
of the town militia ; stood to represent the right of the 
town to exist, and its determination not to yield its 
immemorial .rights ; stood facing eight hundred British 
regulars ; refused to surrender their trust ; refused to 
give up their arms, and with these the right of bearing 
arms ; refused to disperse, and thus to abandon the town- 
right of muster ; stood still till they were fired upon, 
being resolved to put Britain in the wrong, by show- 
ing that her government was bent upon destroying the 
liberties of her subjects, and trampling out local govern- 
ment by arbitrary power. In violation of the chartered 
rights of Massachusetts, in violation of militia laws that 
the king himself had taken advantage of for his help 
against the French, the British troops were sent to seize 
all military stores in the keeping of the towns, and to dis- 
arm the militia. Against this usurpation, Lexington had 
written to Boston, " We trust in God : we shall be ready 
to sacrifice our estates, and every thing dear in life, yea, 
and life itself, in support of the common cause." The 
men of Lexington kept their vow : — 

" They went where duty seemed to call: 
They scarcely asked the reason why; 
They only knew they could but die; 
And death was not the worst of all. 
Of man for man the sacrifice, 
Unstained by blood save theirs, they gave. 
The flowers that blossomed from their grave 
Have sown themselves beneath all skies." 1 

Those men of Lexington and Concord stood for Eng- 
lish liberty and the English constitution against a despotic 
revolution attempted by a bullying king and a toadying 
parliament. That I do not use these epithets unadvisedly, 
or in a hostile spirit, 2 "The London Times" bears witness 

i "Whittier. 

2 I am truly sorry to use such terms concerning the powers that were ; 
but I have sought in vain for more euphonious words to express the exact 



GEOUXDS AND MOTIVES OF THE EEVOLUTIOK 51 

in its calm and candid leader npon the hundredth anniver- 
sary of the battle of Bunker Hill : " While the great 
majority of the British people, as represented in public 
opinion and in literature, was on the American side, the 
government and the majority in both houses of Parlia- 
ment were absolutely proof against every consideration of 
humanity, prudence, or common sense. . . . The greater 
part of the American contention in that war was equally 
shared by the British people. The principles of popular 
representation, and no taxation without it, self-government 
by popular municipal institutions, the independence of the 
judicial bench, and complete responsibility in the exercise 
of all power and patronage, were equally at stake on both 
sides of the Atlantic." . . . But the politicians " were 
maintaining the principles of utter absolutism ; " and the 
British Government "persisted in the struggle with reck- 
less and inhuman obstinacy." l 

The battle of Bunker Hill, on the 17th June, 1775, 
showed the British what stuff the colonists were made of, 
and what they could do when put upon their mettle. 
That battle is not to be judged upon the scale of modern 
warfare ; but old soldiers, who had been in European wars, 
testified that they had never seen so hot a conflict, or so 
many losses in proportion to the force engaged. On the 
one side, three thousand British regulars marching with 
bulldog courage up the hill under cover of the fire of their 
fleet; on the other, squads of militia, who had worked all 
night in putting up the breast-works from which they 
poured forth their deadly musketry. More than a thou- 
sand British fell, dead and wounded ; five hundred Ameri- 
cans, the Americans quitting their trenches only when 
their powder gave out, then fighting with the but-ends 

truth. Also these are not original. Thackeray says of George III., "He 
bribed ; he bullied ; he darkly dissembled on occasion ; he exercised a 
slippery perseverance and a vindictive resolution, which one almost ad- 
mires as one thinks his character over." 

As to the subserviency of Parliament, its own journals witness for that. 
Bat the people of England were not with Parliament. That it is possible 
for Parliament to run counter to the spirit and will of the nation, even in 
these days of a free and enlarged suffrage, was made evident by the almost 
contemptuous disregard of public feeling in passing the Eoyal Titles Act 
of 187H. Americans, who are often so grossly misrepresented by their own 
Congress, are not disposed to cherish a grudge against the English people 
for the misdoings of Parliament a century ago. 

1 Times, June 17, 1875. 



52 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

of their muskets, and retreating with little disorder from an 
enemy too crippled for pursuit. The British had won the 
hill ; but the moral victory was with the Americans. Hence 
we date our emancipation from that battle, and the heroes 
of Bunker Hill are our immortals : — 

" On Fame's eternal camping-ground 
Their silent tents are spread." 

The news of Bunker Hill put the British Government 
in a rage. The Revolution must be put down by over- 
whelming numbers. Unhappily, Germany was then in a 
position to serve as the recruiting-ground of British des- 
potism ; and while France gave us her Lafayette, and 
Poland her Kosciusko, Brunswick and Hesse hired out 
their soldiers by the thousand to suppress our liberties ; 
though Prussia somewhat redeemed the disgrace through 
the scorn of the great Frederic for such infamy, 1 the ser- 
vices of Baron Steuben in drilling our raw volunteers, and 
the heroic sacrifice of De Kalb in our cause. With their 
German mercenaries, the British Government thought the 
subjugation of the Colonies an easy task. They would 
make Boston a base of operations and supplies, and over- 
awe the continent. But now there was a Congress at 
Philadelphia, and Washington was at Cambridge as com- 
mander-in-chief of the Continental army. Too weak in 

1 Franklin, writing from Paris 1 May, 1777. said of the traffic in Hes- 
sians, "The conduct of these princes of ( on-many, who have sold the blood 
of their people, lias subjected them to the contempt and odium of all 
Europe. The Prince of Anspach, whose recruits mutinied and refused to 
march, was obliged to disarm and fetter them, and drive them to the sea- 
side by the help of his guards, himself attending in person. In his return, 
lie was publicly hooted by mobs through every town lie passed in Holland. 
with all sorts'of reproachful epithets. The King of Prussia's humor of 
obliging those princes to pay him the same loll per head for the men they 
drive through his dominions as used to be paid him for their cattle, 1" 
they were sold as such, is generally spoken of with approbation, as con- 
taining a just reproof of these tyrants." — Bigelow's Life of Franklin, ii. 
p. 393. 

In a valuable note to this passage, Mr. Bigelow has gathered the follow- 
ing important items. In a letter to Voltaire. Frederic says of the Land- 
grave of Hesse, "8'il etait sorti de mon e'eole, il ne se serait point fait 
Catbolique, et il n'aurait pas vendu ses sujets aux Anglais comme on 
vend le be'tail pour 1'egorger." — (Euvres posth. de Fr€d€Hc, torn. i. p. .">_'.">. 

In a letter "to Lord North, dated from Kew Aug. 20, 177.~>. George III. 
said, "The only idea these Germans ought to adopt is the being contractors 
for raising recruits, and fixing the price they will deliver them at Hamburg, 
Kotterdam, and any other port they may propose." Can any Englishman 
Or German read that to-day without indignant shame? 



GROUNDS AND MOTIVES OF THE REVOLUTION. 53 

powder and artillery to risk an engagement, Washington 
resolved first to hem the British in Boston, and then to 
drive them out ; but, when he was ready to bombard the 
city, he hesitated to destroy the property of friends in 
punishing foes, and so applied to Congress for authority. 
Its president, John Hancock of Boston, was reputed to be 
the richest man in America ; and his property was largely 
in houses, which, from their position, must be among the 
first to fall, should Washington open fire upon the city. 
Rising in his place, Hancock said, " Nearly all I have in 
the world is in the town of Boston ; but if the expulsion 
of the British troops, and the liberty of my country, de- 
mand that my houses be burned to ashes, issue the order, 
and let the cannon blaze away." At length the cannon 
were ready to blaze away ; but the British fleet and army 
made an ignominious retreat. 1 

Up to this time, little had been thought, and less said, 
by the leaders, touching independence as an issue of the 
conflict. Even Washington still hoped for a reconciliation 
that should secure the Colonies in the rights for which 
alone they had taken up arms. But the flames of war 
were kindling coastwise all along the Colonies; and, with 
these, the fire of independence was kindling in the hearts 
of the people. At length the force of events, and the 
vehemence of public feeling, compelled Gongress to take 
up the measure of independence. For days the Declara- 
tion had been debated ; and on the 4th of July the old 
State House of Philadelphia was besieged by an impatient 
populace, while the bell-ringer waited hour by hour in the 
belfry for the signal that he should announce the Declara- 
tion ratified. At last the signal came, and at every stroke 
rang out the legend that years before had been cast upon 

1 During the winter of 1775-70, "Washington held Gen. Howe's army in 
Boston under siege. With an army of only sixteen thousand men he guarded 
a semicircle of eight or nine miles, his centre being at Cambridge, his right 
wing at Roxbury, and his left upon the Medford River ; thus cutting off 
from Boston all supplies by land. But Washington lacked ammunition, 
money, and clothing for his troops ; and was hampered by the system of 
colonial enlistment, which made him dependent upon the governors of the 
several Colonies for recruits. Under these discouragements, he had to 
build up an army, and hold it together. On the night of March 4, 1770, 
Washington fortified Dorchester Heights; and, as his position was made 
stronger and more threatening day by day, Gen. Howe evacuated Boston, 
and embarked for Halifax on the 17th March. Congress presented Wash- 
ington with a gold medal in commemoration of this event. 



54 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

the rim of the bell: "Proclaim liberty throughout the land 
unto all the inhabitants thereof" 1 As president of the 
Congress, John Hancock had signed the declaration that 
" these Colonies are free and independent States." With 
his own hand he has issued the supreme order for the 
expulsion, not of the British troops onty, but of the Brit- 
ish government and name. Now "let the cannon 

BLAZE A WAX." 

1 This bell was first hung in 1753. During the Revolutionary war it was 
taken down and buried, to avoid its being captured by the enemy. It was 
a favorite pleasure of my boyhood to climb the tower, and sit under the 
bell at the stroke of twelve. Years ago, on a festive day, it was cracked; 
and it has ever since been preserved as a national relic. 



LECTURE II. 

DOCTRINES OF THE DECLARATION OE INDEPENDENCE. 

THE men who, as a Congress of the Colonies, adopted 
the Declaration of Independence, indulged in no 
idle rhetoric when they said, " For the support of this Dec- 
laration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine 
Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, 
our fortunes, and our sacred honor." Two of them, John 
Hancock and Samuel Adams, had already been proclaimed 
rebels and outlaws ; and a price was set upon their heads. 1 
The famous mot of Franklin shows how clearly their col- 
leagues realized what they were doing when they put their 
names to the Declaration. As the members of the Con- 
gress came to the final vote upon the document, Hancock 

1 On the 12th of June, 1775, Gen. Gage, then royal governor of Massa- 
chusetts, proclaimed martial law throughout the Province, at the same 
time making an offer of pardon in the following terms: "I do hereby, in 
his Majesty's name, offer and promise his most gracious pardon to all per- 
sons who shall forthwith lay down their arms, and return to the duties of 
peaceable subjects ; excepting only from the benefit of such pardon Samuel 
Adams and John Hancock, whose offences are of too flagitious a nature 
to admit of any other consideration than that of condign punishment" 
(Journal of the Provincial Congress, p. 331). The Boston Gazette (of June 
24, 1775), with better wit than rhyme, thus parodied this exception: — 

" But then I must out of this plan lock 
Both Samuel Adams and John Hancock; 
For those vile traitors (like bedentures) 
Must be tucked up at all adventures, 
As any offer of a pardon 
Would only tend those rogues to harden." 

(Quoted in Wells's Life of Samuel Adams, ii. 310.) 

John Adams testifies that "James Otis, Samuel Adams, and John Han- 
cock, were the three most essential characters, the first movers, the most 
constant, steady, persevering springs, agents, and most disinterested 
sufferers and firmest pillars, of the whole Revolution." Of these, he rates 
Otis first; but he describes Samuel Adams as " the wedge of steel to split 
the knot of lignumvitcn which tied North America to Great Britain." — 
Works, x. 208. 

55 



56 CENTENNIAL OF AMEKICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

said, " We must be unanimous ; there must be no pulling 
different ways; we must all hang together." — "Yes," 
replied Franklin, " we must all hang together, or we shall 
all hang separately." l That flash of wit reveals the situa- 
tion, — a group of men, mature in years and in experience, 
signing away their lives, if need be, for their liberty, yet 
with a perfect consciousness of the meaning of the act, 
and, in this moment of solemnity and of peril, displaying 
a calm and cheerful confidence in their cause. 2 It was one 
thing for an eager, impatient populace outside the Hall of 
Independence to demand the Declaration, and to greet its 
passage with huzzas, with bonfires, and illuminations ; and 
it was another thing for those fifty-six delegates of the 
Colonies within the hall to issue that Declaration upon the 
pledge of their honor, their fortunes, and their lives. It 
was one thing for the mob in various cities, as the news of 
the Declaration reached them, to burn royal governors in 
effig} r , and throw down the statues of the king 3 and his 
ministers ; and it was another thing for the framers of the 
Declaration to build a pedestal, — that might be their own 
mausoleum, — upon which Liberty and Union should stand 
so firmly, that they could never be thrown down. 

These were no fiery revolutionists, intent upon a work 
of destruction ; no enthusiastic doctrinaires, thinking to 
build of the smoke and ashes of society a new political 
order for mankind. They loved England, — some of them 
as the land of their birth ; 4 most of them as the land of 
their fathers ; all of them as the then foremost land of 
freedom and culture, whose empire they would gladly 
share, if this should preserve liberty to the subject equally 
with loyalty to the crown. They were averse to war ; for 

1 Bigelow's Life of Franklin, ii. 3G0. This could hardly have heen at the 
signing, which was simply a matter of form, some time after the treason- 
able act itself. 

2 Everyone has heard of the saying of Hancock, as he signed the Decla- 
ration in his large, hold hand, " John Bull can read that without specta- 
cles;" and of Charles Carroll, who, when it was suggested that lie might 
escape because there were others of his name, added/ "o/ Carrollton," say- 
ing, " Now they'll know where to rind me." 

3 Washington was in New York when the statue of George III. in the 
Bowling Green was demolished. He condemned such violent proceedings 
in a general order, saying, " The general hopes and trusts that every otti- 
cer and man will endeavor so to live and act as becomes a Christian soldier, 
defending the sacred rights and liberties of his country." 

4 Eight of the signers were born in Great Britain. 



DOCTRINES OF THE DECLARATION. 57 

they had had experience of its cost and waste and losses 
in the defence of their own frontiers. They were averse 
to a change of government ; being satisfied with their local 
administration, if its freedom could be preserved in har- 
mony with the national Parliament. They were men of 
experience in affairs, accustomed to act with reason and 
deliberation, and honored with the confidence of their 
fellow-citizens in an age when office was yet an honor, and 
politics not yet a trade. The average age of the signers 
of the Declaration was somewhat over forty : only two of 
them were under thirty, one-half of them were forty-five 
and upwards, seventeen were over fifty, and seven over 
sixty years. The fervor of youth was controlled by the 
prudence and firmness of middle life, and guided by the 
wisdom and dignity of age. Of the whole number of 
fifty-six, thirty-nine had received a liberal education : of 
these, twenty-four were in the profession of the law, four 
were doctors of medicine, one was president of a college. 1 
In addition to the eiorht who were born in the old coun- 
try were twelve who had visited England and the conti- 
nent of Europe ; and, of these, seven had pursued their 
studies at Eton, Edinburgh, Cambridge, and the Inner 
Temple. One of the signers was a nephew of the Dean 
of St. Paul's ; 2 another, the grandson of the Bishop of 
Worcester ; 3 a third had been honored with the freedom 
of the city of Edinburgh. 4 Not a few of them — John 
Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Robert 
Morris, Benjamin Rush, Roger Sherman, Oliver Wolcott 
— have left memorials in science, law, finance, statesman- 
ship, diplomacy, of which any nation might be proud ; and 
their collective state papers commanded the admiration of 
their age. 5 These, then, were not a body to be hurried by 
impulse into rash innovations. Nor were they. The 
British Government forced war upon the Colonies, and 
the war forced independence. 

When Franklin retired from his post at London as 
agent of the Colonies, in March, 1775, the utmost that 
was thought of was resistance, and resistance as a means 

1 John Witherspoon of Princeton. 2 Eraucis Lewis of New York. 

3 Francis Hopkinson of Philadelphia. 

4 Richard Stockton of New Jersey. 

6 Pitt and Burke were warm in their praise. 



58 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

toward reconciliation. Separation was but a dream or a 
dread. When Franklin reached home, he was met with 
the news of Lexington ; and, the day after his arrival, 
he was chosen a member of the Continental Congress. 
Then followed Bunker Hill, and the threats of British 
officers to lay waste the country by foreign mercenaries. 
At this stage, the American philosopher wrote to a former 
friend in London, 1 — 

Mr. Strahan, — You are a member of Parliament, and one of 
that majority who has doomed my country to destruction. You have 
began to burn our towns, and murder our people. Look upon your 
hands ! they are stained with the blood of your relations. You and 
I were long friends : you are now my enemy, and I am 

Yours, B. Franklin. 

The tone of this letter shows that public spirit in the 
Colonies had already grown determined and defiant. A 
letter to Josiah Quincy from Franklin, in the following 
April (1776), marks the progress of the spirit of inde- 
pendence : " You ask, When is the Continental Congress 
by general consent to be formed into a supreme legisla- 
ture, alliances defensive and offensive formed, our ports 
opened, and a formidable naval force established at the 
public charge ? I can only answer, at present, that noth- 
ing seems wanting but that 4 general consent.' The novel- 
ty of the thing deters some ; the doubt of success, others ; 
the vain hope of reconciliation, many. But our enemies 
take continually every proper measure to remove these 
obstacles ; and their endeavors are attended with success, 
since every day furnishes us with new causes of increas- 
ing enmity, and new reasons for wishing an eternal sepa- 
ration ; so that there is a rapid increase of the formerly 
small party who were for an independent government.'' 2 

Two months later, this party of independence had 
grown to embrace almost the entire Congress, and the 
great body of the people of all the Colonies. 3 But the 

1 Bigelow's Life of Franklin, ii. 343. 2 Ibid., ii. 357. 

3 The Revolution was born of the heroic spirit of America, and represent- 
ed the life of her people. Mr. Josiah Quincy once narrated to me Low in 
his boyhood lie used to go to read to John Adams, then toward Ids nineti- 
eth year. The delight of the old patriot was to listen to Cicero de Senee- 
tute*; and he would take up in advance the glowing periods, saying. "O 
prasclaruni diem, quum in illud divinum animorum concilium coetumque 



DOCTRINES OF THE DECLARATION. 59 

patriots who were charged with the responsibility of 
affairs felt their way with the caution of men, who, know- 
ing the calamities of war and the risks of revolution, 
realized their personal accountability to their country, to 
the world, to history, and to God. On the seventh day of 
June (1776), a resolution was laid before Congress in 
these words : — 

" Resolved^ That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to 
be, free and independent States ; that they are absolved from all 
allegiance to the British crown; and that all political connection 
between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, 
totally dissolved." 

After three days' discussion, a committee was appointed 
to draught a declaration to the effect of the resolution, and 
the whole subject was postponed to the first day of July: 
on that day the Declaration of Independence was taken 
up by the House in committee of the whole, and, after 
three days of spirited and thorough discussion, was adopt- 
ed, and authenticated by the signatures of the president 
and secretary of the Congress. Hence the 4th of July 
is the proper anniversary of the Declaration. 1 But Con- 

proficiscar, quumque ex liac turba et colluvione discedam ! Proficiscar enim 
non ad eos solum viros, de quibus ante dixi, verum etiani ad Catonem 
meuru, quo nemo vir melior natus est, nemo pietate prsestantior; cuius a 
me corpus crematum est — quod contra deeuit, ab illo meum— animus vero 
non me deserens, sed respectans, in ea profecto loca discessit, quo mibi ipsi 
cernebat esse veniendum." 

Grand old hero! thus joining tbe patriotic fellowships of earth to the 
company of the spirits of the fust. One day young Quincy said to him, 
"It is disputed whether you, Mr. Adams, or Mr. Jefferson, or Franklin, 
starred the idea of independence: pray tell me how it was." — "Neither 
Jefferson nor Franklin nor I can claim that honor: independence sprang 
from the hearts of the people. When I was a student of law, I taught 
school at Worcester, and hoarded round in the families of the farmers; 
and, as I heard them talk, I got such ideas of the state, of liberty, and of 
patriotism, as satisfied me we must come to this at last." 

1 On the 2d of July, Congress adopted the resolution of June 7, "That 
these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent 
States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown; and 
that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain 
is, and ought to be, totally dissolved." This act of separation rilled John 
Adams with such transport, that he wrote, " The second day of July, 177(5, 
will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America, to be cele- 
brated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival." But 
the issuing of the Declaration two days later, which announced to tbe 
world the independence of the States, -was seized upon as the fact to be 
commemorated. (For details as to dates, see Jefferson's Autobiography, 
and the Letters of John Adams to Mrs. Adams.) The alleged declaration 
of independence at Mecklenburg, N.C., May 20, 1775, is not sufficiently 



60 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

gress, sensible of the magnitude of this act, and desiring 
to proceed with solemnity and deliberation, caused the 
Declaration to be engrossed on parchment; and, on the 
second day of August, this copy was signed by each and 
every member of the Congress. Then "thirteen clocks 
were made to strike together, — a perfection of mechanism 
which no artist had ever before effected." 1 

But, while Congress was thus deliberate in the act and 
the form of the Declaration of Independence, many of the 
leaders were enthusiastic for the separation from Great 
Britain, and sanguine of success. Witherspoon described 
the public spirit as not only ripe for independence, but 
rotting for want of it. There was in everybody's mouth 
this apothegm from Paine's trenchant tract styled " Com- 
mon Sense : " " England is too ignorant of America to 
govern it wisely, too jealous of America to govern it justly, 
and too distant from America to govern it at all." Rising 
to the fervor of a prophet, John Adams said, " Live or die, 
survive or perish, I am for the Declaration. ... It is an 
event to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by 
solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be 
solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, 
sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end 
of the continent to the other, from this time forward for- 
evermore." Fifty years after, this untiring patriot, who 
had served his country as minister plenipotentiary to 
France, England, and other countries of Europe ; who for 
eight years was Vice-President under Washington, and 
four years was President after Washington, — John Adams, 
then nearing his ninety-first birthday, on the night of the 
3d of July lay sinking into the sleep of death. The mor- 
row was the jubilee of independence ; and at daybreak 
he was roused from his lethargy bv the rinoincr f bells 
and the booming of cannon. With a bewildered look, he 
asked the occasion of this noise of cannon and bells ; and, 
being reminded that it was " Independence Day," he kin- 
dled with the memories of half a century, cried " Inde- 

authenticated to take its place in history; and, in any case, it is clear, from 
the correspondence between Jefferson and Adams upon the subject, that 
neither of them had any knowledge of the resolutions said to have been 
passed at Charlotte. 

i John Adams: Works, x. 283. 



DOCTRINES OF THE DECLARATION. 61 

pendence forever ! " and expired. At almost the same hour, 
on that same fiftieth anniversary of national independence, 
the Virginian patriot who draughted the Declaration, who 
was Vice-President under Adams, and President after him, 
— Thomas Jefferson, — also died. Another fifty years 
have gone, the hundredth anniversary of the Declaration of 
Independence has come, and the work they did stands, — 
stands broader, firmer, more appreciated and honored, than 
in their day. The words in which Mr. Webster commemo- 
rated Adams and Jefferson have gathered force in these 
past fifty years : " No age will come in which the Ameri- 
can Revolution will appear less than it is, — one of the 
greatest events in human history; no age will come in 
which it shall cease to be seen and felt on either continent, 
that a mighty step, a great advance, not only in American 
affairs, but in human affairs, was made on the 4th of July, 
1776." 1 

In the century that has passed since that day, the 
United States have gone through every experience possi- 
ble to a nation, save that of being conquered and held by 
a foreign power ; the voluntary abandonment of one form 
of government — the Confederation of 1777- 81 2 — for 
another, — the Constitution of 1788 ; 3 severe financial 
crises, from the Continental currency of the Revolution 
down to the "greenbacks" of the civil war; two great for- 
eign wars, — that of 1812 with Great Britain, in which the 
United States won renown as a naval power, and that of 
1845 with Mexico, in which the United States acquired an 
immense reach of territory from Texas to the Pacific 
Ocean ; the violence of political parties, especially in the 
strifes over the currency, the tariff, and slavery ; the cor- 
ruption of the civil service, and the degeneracy of public 
officers; the formidable rebellion of 1861, with the four 
years of civil war that followed it; the assassination of 
one President, and the attempt to impeach another ; the 
amendment of the Constitution, so that newly-emancipated 
slaves were admitted to vote, and made eligible to office on 

1 Oration on Adams and Jefferson : "Works, vol. i. 116. 

2 The Articles of Confederation were adopted by Congress 15th Novem- 
ber, 1777, but not finally ratified by the Colonies until March, 1781. 

3 The Constitution was reported to Congress Sept. 28, 1787, and in the 
course of 1788 was so far ratified by States as to go into operation March 4, 
1789. 



(32 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

the basis of universal suffrage ; an enormous public debt 
created by the war, and the spirit of speculation and 
extravagance that the war had fostered ; the reconstruc- 
tion of disordered States, and the reviving of their industry 
in face of hostile factions and races ; and, worst of all, a 
medley of foreign immigration, with its ignorance and im- 
pudence, its priestcraft and pauperism, its radicalism and 
rationalism, its sensuality and its superstition : all these 
manifold tests and perils have the United States gone 
through successfully, triumphantly, in their first century 
of national life, though at each phase of excitement, each 
approach of danger, the prophets of evil gave warning of 
the dissolution of the Union, the subversion of the re- 
public. 

Of late, European critics have invented for the United 
States a new danger, or rather have revived a peril that 
was thought imminent in the early days of independence. 
Those political owls of the Old World that cling to the 
shades of the middle ages, with that air of superlative 
wisdom which this particular species of owl knows so well 
to put on, now sing, " To-who with your republic : you'll 
come to a monarchy at last." But, as I listen to these 
oracles of night, I ask, " Do you, then, threaten us with a 
monarchy as a calamity ? or do you wish that we should 
become monarchists in order to re-assure }X)U of your posi- 
tion and principles by the failure of ours ? " To all such 
prophets and counsellors I would say, " Ponder the lessons 
of the century, and if you yourselves would not, 

' Like the owl by day, 
If he arise, be mocked and wondered at,' 

then learn from Americans to be so well satisfied of the 
excellence and stability of your own government, that, 
without either boasting or envy, }^ou can leave other peo- 
ple to be satisfied with theirs. I do not advocate a re- 
public for you, nor recommend it as a panacea for your 
social evils. The fundamental doctrine of American 
republicanism is, that every people should have such gov- 
ernment as best pleases itself; and, if a monarchy best 
pleases you, that is no affair of ours." To our Prussian 
critics especially, I am wont to say, " I can but congratu- 



DOCTRINES OF THE DECLARATION". 63 

late you upon having the best reigning house of modern 
history, and the best sovereign, surrounded with the ablest 
ministry, of the present stage ; and having these, with 
two constitutions, two parliaments, and universal suffrage 
to boot, I beg you to be so far content as to look calmly 
upon a great, free, happy people beyond the sea, and, with- 
out prejudices or prophecies, to study their history with a 
view to ascertain why they are ivhat they are." Here is 
an organic, independent republic, a hundred years old, 
resting upon a foundation of local self-government and 
provisional union that had stood for a hundred and fifty 
years before. This national life is to be studied in the 
moral and social forces that shaped it into being ; in the 
ethical and political truths upon which it established itself 
as a self-contained and independent power ; and in the 
political forms through which it has developed its freedom, 
its unity, and its strength. The nascent forces of the 
nation I have considered in the previous Lecture : in this 
we are to study its basis of ethical and political truths ; 
and, in the next, the forms of its political development. 
The remaining Lectures of the series will be given to the 
fruits of this national life under the several modes of politi- 
cal, social, industrial, educational, and religious activity. 

The ethical and political doctrines upon which the gov- 
ernment of the United States is founded were pat forth 
in the Declaration of Independence as " self-evident 
truths," and concern the essential and inalienable rights 
of men, the source and the functions of government, and 
the right of revolution. In judging of this document, one 
should keep in mind that it is a " declaration " of political 
principles, and not a dissertation on political philosophy 
defining and defending those principles. The Congress 
that published independence knew they were doing a great 
act, and gave the reasons for that act, — not the reasons 
of the reasons. The rhetoric, indeed, is open to criticism, 
as somewhat too strained and declamatory for a state 
paper ; but judged by the oratory of the British Parlia- 
ment of the same period, and by the then prevailing tone 
of literature, it was less faulty for its purpose than it may 
seem to our severer taste ; and, besides, some extravagance 
of expression may be pardoned to men who were defying 



04 CENTENNIAL OP AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

a superior power at the peril of their lives. 1 Yet theirs 
was no vaporing pronuncianiento : the Declaration has the 
vehemence of truth and strength. It begins by recogniz- 
ing the comity of nations, and appeals to that high court 
of international equity by which the claims and doings of 
each individual people must be judged, — the aggregate 
opinion of the civilized world. Without waiting for the 
prestige of success, or seeking the recognition of separate 
powers, the United States declared themselves a nation, 
and put themselves before the court of nations upon the 
merits of their cause, with facts, truths, rights, addressed 
to the common consciousness of mankind. The existence 
of a nation being determined by certain natural laws or 
causes under a superintending Providence, they set forth 
the evidence that no premature or wilful outbreak, but 
such inevitable causes, had compelled this act of independ- 
ence. " When, in the course of human events, it becomes 
necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands 
which have connected them with another, and to assume 
among the powers of the earth the separate and equal 
station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God 
entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind 
requires that they should declare the causes which impel 

1 In some points, Congress improved the draught as prepared by Jeffer- 
son. For " inherent and inalienable rights" they substituted "certain in- 
alienable rights." After the phrase, """Let facts be submitted to a candid 
world," they struck out the boastful statement, ''for the truth of which we 
pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood." 

While the document was under criticism, Franklin relieved the sensi- 
tiveness of Jefferson by this story: " When I was a journeyman printer, 
one of my companions, an apprentice.! hatter, having served out hn time, 
wa; about to open shop for himself. His first concern was to have a hand- 
some signboard with a proper inscription. He composed it in these words, 
'■John Thompson, Hatter, makes and sells Hats for read;/ Money,' with a figure 
of a hat subjoined. But he thought he would submit it to his friends for 
their amendments. The first he showed it to thought the word ' hatter ' tau- 
tologous, because followed by the words ' makes hats,' which showed he w&l 
a hatter. It was struck out. The next observed that the word 'makes' 
might as well lie omitted, because his customers would not care who made 
the hats: if good, and to their mind, they would buy, by whomsoever made. 
He struck it out. A third said he thought the word 4 ' for ready money ' were 
useless, as it was not the custom of the place to sell on credit: every one 
who purchased expected to pay. They were parted with; and the inscrip- 
tion now stood, 'John Thompson sells hats.' ' Sells hats,' says his next 
friend: ' why, nobody will expect you to give them away. What, then, is 
the use of that word V ' It was stricken out; and hats followed, the rather 
as there was one painted on the board. So his inscription was ultimately 
reduced to John Thompson, with the figure of a hat subjoined." 

After all, it would not make a bad figure if the Declaration were 
Thomas Jefferson and a liberty-cap! 



DOCTRINES OF THE DECLARATION. (J5 

them to the separation ; " and to this end they say, " Let 
facts be submitted to a candid world." Here was no 
secret conspiracy, aiming to get control of power by 
treachery and assassination; no coup d'etat, trusting to 
audacity and surprise for its success ; no mob of adventur- 
ers, threatening slaughter and death to whoever should 
oppose them, and carrying anarchy and destruction in 
their path ; but a body of men trained in the service of 
the State, selected by their countrymen for their intelli- 
gence, prudence, and experience, addressed themselves 
with the calmness of truth, the earnestness of conviction, 
the confidence of right, to the common sense and . the 
common conscience of their age, and to the tribunal of 
history. With all their lofty notions of popular rights 
and national independence, the American revolutionists 
did not feel at liberty to disturb the peace and order of 
the world, without openly justifying their proceeding 
before the world. They did not utter a cry for help ; for 
they meant to help themselves. They did not appeal for 
moral support ; for they found support in the justice of 
their cause. But, deeming themselves and their cause 
worthy of respect, instead of suing for admission into the 
family of nations, they at once took their " equal station 
among the powers of the earth," with a Declaration exhib- 
iting for their pedigree the inalienable rights of man, for 
their patent the laws of nature and of God, and for their 
bearings independence supported by justice, and already 
baptized with fire and blood. With the perfect conscious- 
ness of " the rectitude of their intentions," the authors of 
the Declaration appealed " to the Supreme Judge of the 
world," and, " with a firm reliance on the protection of 
Divine Providence," staked life, fortune, honor, upon their 
cause. 

The Declaration, as I have said, is not a dissertation on 
political science ; yet it is grounded in a philosophy of man 
and of government that shows its authors to have been 
well trained in the logic of thinking and of expression ; 
and it even opens with a syllogism, the conclusion of 
which is inevitable, if the premises of the first and middle 
terms be admitted as self-evident truths. In the first Lec- 
ture it was shown that the Revolution originated in a con- 



66 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

test for existing: and ancestral rights in the exercise of 
local government. These rights are all assumed in the 
Declaration ; are woven into its whole texture ; but they 
appear under the form of charges and protests against 
the " usurpations " of the King of Great Britain ; while 
the Declaration goes down to the foundation of popu- 
lar government in the natural rights of man, and in the 
source of civil government and its proper functions and 
duties. 

" We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men 
are created equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator 
with certain inalienable rights ; that among these are life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ; that, to secure these 
rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving 
their just powers from the consent of the governed ; that, 
whenever any form of government becomes destructive of 
these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abol- 
ish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foun- 
dation on such principles, and organizing its powers in 
such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their 
safety and happiness." Couched in these successive assev- 
erations is the syllogism : — 

(1.) All men are possessed of certain inalienable rights. 

(2.) The possessors of these rights form or assent to 
governments for the protection of the same. 

(3.) When government would destroy these rights, 
their possessors may destroy the government in order to 
preserve the rights. 

Men had read much, thought much, learned much, 
before they framed these propositions ; and their lives were 
consistent with their logic. We have done justice to their 
sincerity and heroism : it is their logic that now concerns 
us ; for in that lay the germs of a philosophy that should 
reconstruct or modify modern society. 

In weighing the propositions laid down in the Declara- 
tion, one should consider how difficult it is to formulate a 
principle, and especially to reduce principles of politics 
and ethics to axioms. In the effort to compress a phi- 
losophy into a proverb, or to reduce a science to defini- 
tions, the mind is apt to fix itself upon the single truth 
or truths before it with an intensity of concentration that 






DOCTRINES OF THE DECLARATION. Q>J 

excludes correlative or qualifying truths. Hence there 
is a tendency to over-statement, or one-sided statement, in 
the first announcement of a discovery, whether in physics, 
politics, or morals. But one should remember, also, that 
the progress of knowledge (as, for instance, in theology, 
in psychology, and in geology) has been largely through 
a series of over-statements and counter-statements, — one 
principle pushed with vehemence till it met its correc- 
tive, and, by the attrition of controversy, each wore the 
other down to its just proportions ; or until the new truth, 
entering like a wedge, forced its way into the system of 
truth by compelling a re-adjustment of the relations of 
things. So of these doctrines of the Declaration; viewed 
apart, perhaps over-stated, yet containing truths that re- 
quired emphasis to gain a hearing, and wedging ideas into 
the social structure that compelled a re-adjustment of the 
political elements and order of the world. The fine point 
of that wedge was this tiny sentence of five words, "All 
men are created equal : " once that gains entrance, it makes 
a huge crack in any society that is constructed of privi- 
leged orders in Church and State ; and, if well driven home, 
it must reduce all artificial privileges to the level of natural 
gifts, opportunities, services, attainments. Radical as this 
may seem in the bald statement of the doctrine, yet the 
equality set forth in the Declaration of Independence is 
not a radicalism that any honest man should be afraid of, 
since it is grounded in the highest moral reason, is directed 
to the highest personal and social happiness, and fenced 
about with justice and good-will. 

It would be absurd to charge upon the authors of the 
Declaration of Independence the absurdity of meaning 
that all men are, or could be, or ought to be, equal in 
station, in capacity, in claim to consideration, in adaptation 
to political service or office, or even in the possibility of 
rising to the same degrees in honor, power, genius, wealth, 
renown. No community of human beings could exist with 
such equality, and perform the functions of life. As in 
the physical universe, so in the universe of mind : " There 
are celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial; bat the glory 
of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is 
another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory 



63 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star 
differeth from another star in glory." l Nowhere are men 
brought into life under equal conditions, and nowhere do 
men prove themselves of equal calibre and fibre where 
their surroundings are proximately the same. In France 
it does not make men equal to paint out the old royal 
and imperial names of streets and public buildings, and 
paint over these, "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternity ;" and in the 
United States it does not make men equal to give them 
universal suffrage, without respect to nativity, color, race, 
or condition. Yet there is a profound and far-reaching 
sense in which the doctrine of the Declaration is true, 
" that all men are created equal; " and the just perception 
of this truth gives dignity and strength to the national 
life. This equality is predicated of men as men, and as 
created beings : that is to say, in the contemplation of the 
Creator, as rational and moral beings they are of equal 
worth and right in respect of the use of the powers, and 
the enjoyment of the means and pleasures, of such exist- 
ence. In this view, all men are alike k * endowed by their 
Creator with certain inalienable rights;" and "among 
these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Who 
would dare deny this equality of universal humanity? — 
the right of every man to live without hinderance or ques- 
tion from others ; the right to freedom in the use of his 
powers of body and mind, — freedom to make as much as 
lies within him of life and its opportunities, to make the 
most of himself as a man; and the right to the fair pro- 
curement and enjojmient of all the happiness within his 
reach. By what warrant can any man pretend to be 
above or distinct from his fellows in the right to lire, the 
right to use his powers of living, the right to enjoy all 
the good he can fairly attain? These rights inhere in the 
nature of man, and are " inalienable." To living in a com- 
munity, or a political society, it is essential that these 
rights of the individual be in some measure qualified or 
curtailed for the good of the whole ; but this is not because, 
in these particulars, any of the community can claim a 
right superior to others to which these must yield, but 
simply that each may enjoy his own natural rights to the 

i 1 Cor. sr. 40, 41. 



DOCTRINES OF THE DECLARATION". 69 

fullest extent possible, by securing to every other the like 
equitable enjoyment of his rights ; that is, that each may 
en]oj the largest freedom and happiness possible without 
encroaching upon the rights of others, or being encroached 
upon by others, in the pursuit of their equitable freedom 
and happiness. 

In the hour of shipwreck no man can say to another, 
" The life-boat shall be kept for me ; for I have better 
right to live than thou." And when the boat is tossing in 
mid-ocean, without food or water, and the dread moment 
comes when one must die to save the rest, it is not birth, 
nor rank, nor wealth, nor genius, nor office, but the lot 
cast among men as equals, that determines who shall 
live, and who shall die. On board the ship of state, though 
some are commanding officers, some the paying passengers, 
and some the working crew, all are equal in these essen- 
tial rights, — to live, to be free, and to be happy. If the 
ship is laboring, and must be lightened, they will throw 
overboard what seems to them fittest and handiest, — king, 
lords, commons, army, church, constitution, frtebiscitwn ; 
and, if she must go down, sauve qui pent will be the one 
law and cry of equalized humanity. The equality of men 
as taught in the Declaration lies deeper than all forms of 
government. It teaches, that, in the contemplation of the 
State, all men should be equal as objects of care and of 
right; that the State should care for all alike, and be just 
to all alike. So far as human action falls within the scope 
of civil government, laws should be equal, justice equal, 
protection equal, opportunity of development equal, for all. 

In the Declaration, this equality was asserted against the 
tyrannical usurpations of the king and parliament of Great 
Britain : in our time it requires to be asserted against the 
more harsh and inexorable tyranny that is set up for the 
laws of nature. The tyranny of men can be resisted and 
overthrown ; but the tyranny of nature, once established, 
can neither be resisted nor evaded. The Declaration pro- 
claims " that all men are created equal," and "that they 
are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable 
rights." Their rights are given by God, and therefore 
cannot be taken away by men. If, then, the doctrine of 
materialists is true, if there is no Creator, if man is not the 



70 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

loved and gifted child of God, then one great pillar of 
American liberty falls. Agonizing and fecundating forces, 
contesting or polarizing atoms, give us no such doctrine 
of the equality of men in the right to be, to act, to enjoy. 
Whatever may be true of other species, with men the 
" struggle for existence " does not issue in " the survival 
of the fittest," but oftener of the violent, the cunning, the 
cruel. By that law there is no basis for human equality 
as the defiance of tyranny, the defence of liberty. For 
this, there is need of the moral perception that sees in the 
weakest and the lowliest the man, created by God for life, 
for freedom, and for joy. If superstition has been the 
handmaid of tyranny, materialism is tyranny itself. I 
grant that weighty arguments for the rights of men, for 
freedom of political organization and local government, 
may be derived from science, philosophy, experience, 
history ; but none of these is so significant, so sweeping, 
so conclusive, nor are all of them together so weighty and 
enduring, as this single sentence, " All men are created 
equal." Let Americans ever stand upon that one sublime 
declaration, and hold fast the liberty that is there given 
them by " the laws of nature and of nature's God." 

The second proposition of the Declaration is, " that, to 
secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, 
deriving their just powers from the consent of the gov- 
erned." Here, more especially, must one keep in mind 
what was before said of one-sidedness of statement in a 
document intended to justify a particular measure, and to 
emphasize truths that were the refuge and defence of man- 
kind against despotic power. Thus the Declaration speaks 
nowhere of duties, but only of rights ; for its authors held 
that the Colonies had discharged their duties as loyal sub- 
jects of the crown, until the invasion and threatened 
annihilation of their rights compelled them to throw off 
their allegiance. It was rights that were in question, 
rights that were in jeopardy ; and a bold, strong assertion 
of rights was what the case demanded. In such a docu- 
ment there was no call to qualify the statement of rights 
by a statement of their correlative duties, which existed 
in the very reason of things, and would assert themselves 
in clue time. 



DOCTRINES OF THE DECLARATION. *l\ 

So of the statement that "governments derive their 
just powers from the consent of the governed." The 
men of '76 did not look forward to a time when that same 
nation, whose independence they proclaimed " in the name 
and by the authority of the good people of the Colonies," 
would for years maintain, by force of arms, its government 
over several of its own States without " the consent of the 
governed," and this with every ground of reason and 
of right : they did not even look forward to the close of 
the war of independence, when, in the very State of 
Massachusetts, which led on the war against British taxa- 
tion, a rebellion should break out against paying debts of 
the United States contracted for the war, and taxes levied 
by the State without " the consent of the governed ; " and 
Massachusetts should invoke the aid of Federal troops in 
putting down her own citizens, and, having suppressed the 
rebellion with a strong hand, should sentence the ring- 
leaders to death, also without "the consent of" these 
refractory subjects. In a word, the Congress of 1776 did 
not think it necessary to fortify the doctrines of the 
Declaration against such abuses and absurdities as would 
lead to the disintegration of society, and make government 
the prey of factions, or the sport of individual wills. It 
was not individual, personal wills that they were thinking 
of when they spoke of "the consent of the governed." 
The right of self-government in communities, the right of 
representation in some form in the government, the right 
to be recognized in laying taxes and framing laws, as 
parties having a substantial voice in the same, — this was 
the right that the British Parliament had attempted to 
wrest from them by an arbitrary government, a govern- 
ment without consent; and therefore they laid such 
stress upon governing with " the consent of the governed," 
without reference to the mode of government, or the 
manner in which such consent should be ascertained. 
Interpreted by its own light, this second proposition of the 
Declaration, like the first, contains a deep, far-reaching 
truth, — a truth by which to hold governments to their 
place and duty in the interest of mankind. 

Man must live in society. In a solitary, single-handed 
contest with wild beasts, with untamed nature, and even 



72 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

with his own physical wants, it would fare hard with him 
as to the enjoyment of life, liberty, or happiness ; and, in 
fact, he is born into and for society, and there he must 
abide. But, while the existence of society requires some 
mutual adjustment of the rights of individuals, only by 
crime against society can one forfeit any of his natural, 
personal rights. Crime apart, these rights are inalienable ; 
and the independence of civil society, and its development 
in culture, require that these rights be guaranteed intact; 
that every man shall have equal security with any other 
in life, freedom, happiness, and shall be protected and 
encouraged in making the most of his powers, capacities, 
and opportunities for good. 

The good to be sought in civil society is not, as Beccaria, 
Priestley, and the Bentham school would have it, an affair 
of the multiplication-table, " the greatest happiness of the 
greatest number," but the best possible facilities for hap- 
piness placed impartially within the reach of all. In arti- 
ficial rights, the public good may sometimes claim the 
sacrifice of individual interests; as, for instance, when a 
right of way is taken through private lands. But no plea 
of public good can take away from me one natural right, 
so long as I am guiltless of crime against the public wel- 
fare. For the individual voluntarily to sacrifice life, 
freedom, happiness, to some public end, is noble, is divine ; 
but for the majority to deprive him of these for the sake 
of " the greatest happiness of the greatest number " is an 
outrage upon that which is noble and divine in man. 
Society must leave to its every member his equal right to 
life, liberty, happiness. And what society must leave 
intact, that must the state secure. The state does not 
exist as an end in itself : it is the creation of society for 
its own conservation. Government is instituted by society, 
or rather it emerges from society as a condition necessary 
to its -own existence. With society grow up institutions, 
customs, laws ; and these, in time, take on the organic form 
of government. In every political society there is a latent 
sovereignty, — a power not only charged with exhibiting 
and defending the societ}^ against other powers without, but 
capable of maintaining the society within itself. But this 
power must be used for the well-being of the society whose 



DOCTEINES OF THE DECLAEATION. 73 

attribute it is. Society does not exist for the state, but 
the state for society; and hence government is bound 
to secure to the integral members of society those rights 
upon which, as we have seen, society itself must rest for 
independence and culture. For the preservation of these 
rights, there is need of safety and order, the feeling of 
security, and hence need of government, to give to society 
security and permanence in and through the inalienable 
rights of its personal constituents. 

The correlative duties of the citizen to the government 
belong to another category : we are here concerned with 
the ends and obligations of civil government. And we 
might almost say, it is the right of every man to be gov- 
erned ; i.e., to be under law and authority competent and 
willing to maintain all just rights, and thus to make him 
secure in the rights that are justly his. In social anarchy, 
there is no security for personal rights ; and it is of the 
fundamental philosophy of society, that, " to secure these 
rights, governments are instituted among men." Take 
away that conception, and by what' pretext under heaven 
should a government exist ? Could men owe allegiance to 
a government that should avowedly disregard their right 
to life, liberty, and happiness, and seek to trample out 
those rights by despotic power ? Would society ever 
purposely establish such a government, or willingly recog- 
nize its authority ? Do slaves owe allegiance to the force 
that enslaves them ? The second proposition of the Dec- 
laration of Independence is fundamental to human society, 
— that governments exist, not by virtue of force, nor to 
maintain the power and rule of the governing, but to 
secure the rights of the governed. 

But here observe the admirable wisdom of the Declara- 
tion in its specification of rights. On this point, the omis- 
sions of the document are almost as important to its true 
interpretation as are its express declarations. Indeed, in 
commenting upon certain passages in the paper as he re- 
ported it, and which Congress voted to strike out, Jeffer- 
son makes the observation, that " the sentiments of men 
are known not only by what they receive, but what they 
reject also ; " 1 and we may apply this rule of construction 

1 Jefferson's Works, vol. i. p. 19. 



74 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

to liis own omissions in the original draught of the Declara- 
tion. This, be it remembered, is a political document, and 
deals with political grievances and political rights. It is 
a document designed to justify to the world and to pos- 
terity the act of a people in declaring themselves a distinct 
nation ; and it rests that action upon the fact that men are 
endowed with certain inalienable rights which government 
is bound to secure, but which the British Government had 
persistently sought to destroy. Now, when the specifica- 
tion of these rights is given, there is no mention, no hint 
even, of suffrage or of office-holding as a right with which 
man is endowed by his Creator. Had they conceived of 
suffrage as a natural right, and of eligibility to office as 
essential to human equality, and that a just government 
must secure these rights, then surely, in laying down the 
" inalienable rights " upon which all righteous government 
must be based, they would not have omitted these, nor 
have given them a secondary place under such generalities 
as life, liberty, and happiness. But in truth they had no 
thought of classing these political rights, or rather politi- 
cal trusts and privileges, with those natural rights that 
are in all men equal and inalienable. The distinction 
between these two classes of rights — rights that are 
natural to man as a being, and rights that are acquired by 
certain acts or conditions, or created by society — is of 
supreme importance for testing certain modern theories of 
popular government in contrast with the government 
actually contemplated by the Declaration of Independence. 
That I may enjoy my natural right to life, liberty, hap- 
piness, it is not necessary that I should in any way rule 
over } T ou, or attempt to control your actions by authority. 
It may, indeed, be necessary to the just enjoyment of our 
several rights, both yours and mine, that there be some 
competent authority above us both to cause us to respect 
each other's rights, if we will not do this from a sense of 
justice and honor; but such an authority is not an exer- 
cise of the right itself, nor a part of the natural right, but 
a something brought in from without to secure the enjo}-- 
ment of said natural right under the conditions and limi- 
tations proper to human society. The natural rights 
enumerated in the Declaration require nothing but oppor- 
tunity, and, for the most part, to be let alone. 



DOCTRINES OF THE DECLARATION. 75 

Quite the reverse is it with political suffrage and politi- 
cal office. These, in their very nature, imply the act of 
governing others, and assume a qualification to govern. 
By what test, then, or evidence, shall we find in man a 
created equality in and for governing, answering to equali- 
ty of right in life, liberty, happiness ? Surely it is far 
from a " self-evident " truth that every man has by birth 
the right to govern his fellows. To claim this for all men 
alike is absurd, since a society of equal governors would 
make actual government void. For each or any to claim 
this for himself is to assume the prerogative of kingship. 
Government is a science ; and to govern is a faculty, a 
capacity, an art, with which some men appear to be 
specially endowed by nature, to which others may attain 
by study, discipline, experience, but for which most men 
show a very small measure either of endowment or of apti- 
tude. Since the very act of governing, even to the extent 
of participation in government by suffrage, affects society 
in its every interest, and may put its every interest, .and 
its very existence, in jeopardy, no one can claim it as his 
right to govern, unless he can show his competence to gov- 
ern, to such extent, at least, as he demands to participate in 
government. 

We have seen, that, in the political society, each man 
retains his equal natural rights, and that society is bound to 
conserve these impartially for all its members ; but in the 
state, which is the governing function of society, no man 
can have a right, except upon the basis of duty accom- 
plished toward the state in fitting himself intellectually, 
morally, practically, to the best of his ability, for its ser- 
vice. Since government emerges from society, and is for 
the behoof of society, it is for society to determine in 
what form, and by what persons, it shall be governed ; and 
each political society must determine this for itself, in its 
own way. Hence there is no natural right to rule, nor to 
vote ; but each and every form of participation in the 
state-function or governing-power of society is a trust, a 
privilege, conferred or conceded by society itself, subject 
to such conditions as society may impose. Here the prin- 
ciple of " the greatest happiness of the greatest number," 
which cannot be maintained in the sphere of purely natu- 
ral rights, may have its legitimate application. 



76 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

As a physical or sentient being, man is entitled to life ; 
as a being of intelligence and will, he is entitled to liberty ; 
as a being of moral affections, hopes, desires, sympathies, 
he is entitled to happiness : these are natural rights with 
which he is endowed by his Creator, and for which he is in 
no way obliged to his fellows. But man is also a political 
being, adapted to live in society and under government ; 
and it is impossible to conceive of him in that relation 
except as owing duties to his fellows, and deriving benefits 
from his fellows; so that every right that he acquires as a 
member of political society is of the nature of an obliga- 
tion to the members in common of the same society. 
Hence such rights are distinct in their ground and tenure 
from natural rights, and can never be brought within the 
same category. 

No political philosopher of recent times has gone farther 
than John Stuart Mill in maintaining natural liberty, or 
"the sovereignty of the individual over himself." Yet 
Mill has also shown, with his accustomed clearness, that 
there is a "rightful limit" to that sovereignty, at which 
" the authority of society " begins. " Every one," says 
Mill, " who receives the protection of society, owes a 
return for the benefit ; and the fact of living in society 
renders it indispensable that each should be bound to 
observe a certain line of conduct towards the rest. This 
cod duct consists, first, in not injuring the interests of one 
another, or rather certain interests, which, either by ex- 
press legal provision or by tacit understanding, ought to be 
considered as rights ; and, secondly, in each person bearing 
his share (to be fixed on some equitable principle) of the 
labors and sacrifices incurred for defending the society or 
its members from injury and molestation. These condi- 
tions society is justified in enforcing, at all cost, to those 
who endeavor to withhold fulfilment." Nor is this all that 
society may do. " If one has infringed the rules necessary 
for the protection of his fellow-creatures, individually or 
collectively, the evil consequences of his acts do not 
then fall on himself, but on others ; and society, as the 
protector of all its members, must retaliate on him, must 
inflict pain on him for the express purpose of punishment, 
and must take care that it be sufficiently severe." 



DOCTRINES OF THE DECLARATION 77 

Mill goes on to argue " that misapplied notions of liberty 
are a real obstacle to the fulfilment by the State of its 
duties." He asks, " Is it not almost a self-evident axiom, 
that the State should require and compel the education, 
up to a certain standard, of every human being who is 
born its citizen ? " And he does not scruple to say that 
" the laws which, in many countries on the Continent, 
forbid marriage, unless the parties can show that they have 
the means of supporting a family, do not exceed the 
legitimate powers of the State ; and, whether such laws be 
expedient or not, they are not objectionable as violations 
of liberty." 1 

Without following Mr. Mill in all his specific applica- 
tions, we must agree that this large concession to the 
rights and powers of the State by so sturdy a champion of 
individualism and so acute a philosopher, and especially 
his insisting that the State should not be impeded in its 
duties by misapplied notions of the liberty of the citizen, 
points to a radical distinction in fact and kind between 
natural rights, and rights originating in, or conferred by, 
society. That Mr. Jefferson perceived this distinction, 
and therefore purposely omitted all mention, hi the Declara- 
tion of Independence, of voting or ruling from his enume- 
ration of the rights with which all men are endowed by 
their Creator, is plain from his correspondence. Thus, in 
his letter to Mr. Coray, dated Oct. 31, 1823, after forty- 
seven years' experience of the doctrines of the Declara- 
tion, in recommending a government for Greece, Mr. Jef- 
ferson says, " The equal rights of man, and the happiness 
of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only 
legitimate objects of government. Modern times have the 
signal advantage, too, of having discovered the only device 
by which these rights can be secured ; to wit, government 
by the people, acting not in person, but by representatives 
chosen by themselves ; that is to say, by every man of 
ripe years and sane mind who either contributes by his 
purse or person to the support of his country." Could 
any thing be clearer or wiser than this statement ? Imme- 
diate participation in the government by each and every 
man as a man is not at all necessary to the idea of popu- 

1 On Liberty, by John Stuart Mill, pp. 134, 142, 189, 194. 



78 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

lar government. The people govern by representatives ; 
and this government by the people is not itself one of the 
equal rights of man, but is a " device by which these rights 
can be secured." Nor has every man an equal right to 
choose representatives in this government by the people : 
for, according to Mr. Jefferson, he must be of mature age, 
and capable of forming a sound judgment ; and he must 
serve his country with his purse or his person ; or, as he 
puts it in another letter, " among the men who either pay 
or fight for their country, no line of right can be drawn." 1 
This political right of sharing in the government requires 
evidence of capacity, and proof of service rendered, or duty 
done. It is not, therefore, a natural right, but a right or 
trust fixed by society upon its own terms. Mr. Jefferson 
argues truly, that it is safe to commit this trust largely to 
the people ; but he never loses sight of the fact, that it is 
a trust to which are appended certain qualifications and 
conditions. Speaking of juries, he says, " The people, 
especially when moderately instructed, are the only safe, 
because the only honest, depositaries of the public rights, 
and should, therefore, be introduced into the administration 
of them in every function to which they are sufficient.''' The 
words that I have emphasized qualify the right or trust 
by the capacity or sufficiency : and Jefferson shows his 
meaning by urging Mr. Coray to prepare his countrymen 
for independence "by improving their minds, and quali- 
fying them for self-government." 

In a letter of May 8, 1825, to Henry Lee, Jefferson 
states this to have been the object of the Declaration of 
Independence : " Not to find out new principles or new 
arguments never before thought of, not merely to say 
things which had never been said before, but to place 
before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms 
so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to jus- 
tify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled 
to take." He admits that the leaders of the Revolution 
were novices in the science of government, by which he 
intends that they had not, in advance, framed a system of 
independent government ; and it is evident, that, at the 
date of the Declaration, they had not decided what form 

i To John Hampden Pleasants, April 19, 1824 : Works, vol. vii. 345. 



DOCTKINES OF THE DECLAEATIOST. 79 

of government the y should adopt. Those who now regard 
suffrage as one of the natural, inalienable rights of man, 
can find no warrant for this doctrine in the Declaration 
of Independence, nor in the writings of the apostle of 
American democracy, Thomas Jefferson. In his view, 
suffrage was a prerogative of society, to be intrusted to 
individuals competent and worthy to exercise it. Does 
any ask, How comes society by this prerogative ? The 
answer is, By the right and necessity of caring for its 
own existence. History, philosophy, experience, teach 
but one lesson ; and no amount of theorizing can ever 
make it otherwise than that, in point of fact, in every 
political society, they who can rule will and must rule, 
though bound to rule with equal justice toward all. This 
is nature, equity, common sense, and leads to true repub- 
licanism. 

Mr. Jefferson's theory of the best government was, that 
the actual governing power should be in the hands of the 
few who by nature and by training have both character 
and capacity for administering affairs ; and these he des- 
ignates the " natural aristocracy." In an elaborate letter 
to John Adams, 1 — more an essay than a letter, — written 
after both had filled the office of President, Jefferson says, 
"I agree with you, that there is a natural aristocracy 
among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents. 
. . . This natural aristocracy I consider as the most 
precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, 
and government of society." Observe here how far Jef- 
ferson was from accounting all men equal to the function 
of governing, or endowed for this by the Creator, and enti- 
tled to it as a personal and inalienable right. " An artifi- 
cial aristocracy, founded on wealth and birth, without 
either virtue or talents," he said, " is a mischievous ingre- 
dient in government; and provision should be made to 
prevent its ascendency." But an aristocracy of nature, 
born to rule, Jefferson believed in, as he had reason to ; 
" and indeed," as he says, " it would have been inconsist- 
ent in creation to have formed man for the social state, 
and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to 
manage the concerns of the society. May we not even 

1 Oct. 28, 1813 : Works, vi. 223. 



80 CENTENNIAL OF AMEBICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

say, that that form of government is the best which pro- 
vides the. most effectually for a pure selection of these 
natural aristoi into the offices of government ? " 

This selection for office of the persons qualified and 
designated by nature to rule he would leave to the body 
of the people, as being entitled to a voice in the composi- 
tion of their government, and as likely, in their own 
interest, to select good and true men for this trust. He 
would " leave to the citizens the free election and separa- 
tion of the aristoi from the pseudo-aristoi, of the wheat 
from the chaff. In general, they will elect the really good 
and wise. In some instances, wealth may corrupt, and 
birth blind them, but not in sufficient degree to endanger 
the society." It is clear, then, that the Declaration of 
Independence does not confound political powers with 
natural rights, the right of living and enjoying life with 
the right of ruling. 1 

To point the distinction between the rights with which 
man is endowed by his Creator, and rights that are in- 
trusted or conceded to him by the political society of which 
he is a member, we may refer conclusively to the trial by 
jury. This is regarded as the very kernel of the Magna 
Charta of King John, which makes that instrument the 
palladium of every Englishman jn respect of life, liberty, 
and property, — the possession of which last is, to most 
men, a synonyme for happiness. The Charter declares, 
" No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseized 
of his freedom or liberties or free customs, or be outlawed 
or exiled, or any otherwise damaged, nor will we pass upon 

1 Some years ago. in an address to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at New 
Haven, on How to build a Nation, I argued for a ''guild of the culti- 
vated" to crown a republican society, and give order and beauty to its 
affairs. The objection, that this would be to create an aristocracy, I met by 
pointing our that the Church of Christ is the most presumptuous aristoc- 
racy under heaven, claiming to be composed of " the saints," " the holy," 
"the sons of God," and to constitute upon earth a " kingdom of heaven," 
above all other kingdoms. But, at the same time, the Church is the one 
example on earth of a pure and ennobling democracy: for this hierarchy 
of God is open to every man to enter it, simply by purifying and ennobling 
bis own character; anil, once within its pale, all are brethren. So should it 
be with the governing hierarchy in the republic, — open to all men through 
conditions of intelligence, character, worth, that would make them per- 
sonally nobler, and at, the same time lift them to the noblest sphere of 
equality. Such a "guild of the cultivated" would, I think, stand higher 
than Jefferson's "natural aristocracy," and yet open a wider or more 
democratic range of selection of the instruments of power. 



DOCTRINES OF THE DECLARATION. gl 

him, nor send upon him, but by lawful judgment of his 
peers, or by the law of the land;" and this promise Mr. 
Hallam styles " the keystone of English liberty." 1 

In the Declaration of Rights put forth by the first 
Continental Congress in 1774, it was resolved, " That the 
respective Colonies are entitled to the common law of 
England, and more especially to the great and inestimable 
privilege of being tried by their peers of the vicinage 
according to the course of that law." The Declaration of 
Independence charged it as a crime upon the King of Eng- 
land, that, in many cases, he " had deprived the colonists 
of the benefits of trial by jury." And the Constitution of 
the United States provides, that, " in all criminal prosecu- 
tions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and 
public trial by an impartial jury of the state and district 
wherein the crime shall have been committed ; " and also, 
that in suits at common law, where the value in contro- 
versy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury 
shall be preserved." But this much-vaunted right, the 
chosen defence of life and liberty against tyranny and 
injustice, has none of the qualities that mark life and 
liberty as natural and inalienable rights. The keystone 
of liberty it well may be ; yet trial by jury is no part of 
man's natural liberty, — the palladium of natural rights, 
but not itself one of those rights. What is there, for 
instance, in nature, to impart the sanctity of justice to the 
deliberation of twelve men and the unanimity of their 
verdict, rather than to a majority of fifteen jurors, as in 
Scotland? Moreover, experience has shown that juries 
may be biassed, bribed, intimidated, and may do the 
grossest injustice to the accused, or the highest injury to 
society and the laws. What is wanted for the safety of 
the innocent, and the punishment of the guilty, is knowl- 
edge, wisdom, experience, and the spirit of justice, in the 
administrators of the law ; and hence, in the United States 
as well as in Great Britain, there is a growing disposition, 
in many cases, to dispense with a jury, and trust to arbitra- 
tion, or to the decision of a judge, subject to appeal. But 
that is no natural right that can thus change its basis 
through experience or expediency : it is a contrivance for 

1 Middle Ages, b. ii. cviii. 



32 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

the protection of individual rights through the machinery 
of social organization ; and, since all men possess certain 
inalienable rights, they have also a right to the best insti- 
tutions for securing those rights. As to the jury, Jefferson 
found in this contrivance almost a democratic participation 
in the judicial function of government, — a sort of revival 
of the Teutonic Gemeinde, in which every freeman might 
be a judge. 1. Yet how gladly would the average citizen 
escape being summoned from his business or his pleasures 
to fulfil his inalienable duty of hearing causes, and sitting 
in judgment upon the actions of his fellows ! But men do 
not thus lightly throw away their natural rights. In 
truth, provisions for ruling and judging are of society, and 
must be ordained by each political society in its own way. 
In some societies, the rule will be that of superior intel- 
ligence or endowment; in some, of power; in some, of 
conceded privilege or custom ; and, in others, the rule of 
the majority. Mr. Jefferson placed it in the last. 
" Where," he asks, " shall we find the origin of just 
powers, if not in the majority of the society? Will it be 
in the minority? or in an individual of that minority ?" 
This is the key to the statement of the Declaration, that 
governments " derive their just powers from the consent 
of the governed." He was not thinking of a poll of equal 
rights, that each individual as an " inalienable " voter 
might " consent "to be governed thus or so, but of the 
community, the political society, in some method of its 
own, framing, commissioning, or consenting to, the govern- 
ment under which it should live ; and, in this view of its 
meaning, this statement of the Declaration, like those that 
precede it, is also true, and of deep and far-reaching sig- 
nificance for governments and for mankind. 

It was by a vote of both houses of Parliament in 1688, 
setting a precedent for the Philadelphia Congress of 1776, 
that the throne of Great Britain was declared vacant ; for- 

1 Yet, curiously enough, Jefferson's own doctrine of human rights in 

the Declaration of Independence did away with the fundamental argument 
upon which the jury had stood as a defence of persons and rights. So long 
as privileged classes exist in society, there is a savor of democratic freedom 
in the rule rhar every man shall be tried by his peers. Bur. in the republic, 
class distinctions are done away, and, as before the law, every man is the 
peer of every other. Hence a democracy deprives the jury of its old-time 
distinction as "the palladium of liberty." 



DOCTBDTES OF THE DECLARATION. g3 

asmuch as King James II. " had endeavored to subvert the 
constitution of the kingdom by breaking the original con- 
tract between the king and the people, and had violated 
the fundamental laws," and moreover, " by withdrawing 
himself out of the kingdom, had abdicated the govern- 
ment." But it was only a very small majority of the 
same Parliament that voted to offer the crown to William, 
Prince of Orange ; yet, to this day, Great Britain has con- 
sented to be governed by the settlement made at the close 
of the Revolution. An assembly hurriedly chosen and 
irregularly convened at Bordeaux, representing at best 
but a part of France, and deputed for the one business of 
making a peace, and ridding the capital, and country of 
an enemy, — this extemporized assembly raised an army, 
fought against and seized Paris, transferred the capital to 
Versailles, made a treaty of peace, raised a loan, paid an 
enormous debt, emancipated the nation, exercised sover- 
eignty in every form, and though composed of legitimists, 
Orleanists, imperialists, and republicans of every grade, 
at last compromised upon a government compounded of a 
person, a name, and a constitution ; and this government 
exercises its just powers of law and order with the acqui- 
escence of France, — " the consent of the governed." 
Sometimes too, where a government originates in usurpa- 
tion, or where its measures at first seem arbitrary, the ac- 
quiescence of the people after the fact, their condoning the 
irregularity by partaking of its fruits, gives to the gov- 
ernment a color of just power and of popular sanction. 
In short, every government is bound to keep constantly in 
view the best good of the totality of its subjects, to iden- 
tify itself with the welfare of the society over which it 
presides, to be mindful of the wants and wishes of the 
political community whose organ it is, to set the people 
in its common-weal before and above the State in its per- 
sonnel, to guard the rights of all with an impartial hand ; 
and only so far as a government is animated by this spirit, 
and acts for these ends, are its powers just, or can it, in 
political ethics, claim the right to be. 

The attachment of a people to their government may 
be variable ; their sentiment toward officers and policy 
may change with men and measures ; their loyalty may 



84 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

be that of enthusiastic devotion, of calm acquiescence, or 
of patient endurance : but there inheres in every body 
politic a latent right of revolution ; and, so long as the 
people do not revive this right, the government de facto 
is presumed to hold its powers with " the consent of the 
governed." 

This right of revolution is the third point made by the 
Declaration of Independence ; or, rather, it is the conclu- 
sion of its famous syllogism. The fact of revolution, or 
of repudiating an existing government, and setting up 
another in its stead, was that which the Declaration was 
framed to justify. The first proposition being that all 
men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with 
certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness; and the second proposition 
being, that, to secure those rights, governments are insti- 
tuted among men, deriving their just powers from the 
consent of the governed. — the conclusion is reached, that, 
" whenever any form of government becomes destructive 
of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to 
abolish it, and to institute a new government, laving its 
foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers 
in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to i 
their safety and happiness." Observe the unimpassioned 
dignity of this statement. It has been alleged that the 
style of the Declaration betrays the impetuosity of youth; 
but though, at the date of its composition, Jefferson was 
only thirty-two years of age, and had not quite toned 
down his rhetoric, yet in this passage of the document he 
exhibits that philosophic caution and precision which won 
for him in after-life the title, "the sage of Montieello." 
Precisely at the point where the European revolutionist 
of recent type would have exploded in fiery declamation, 
Jefferson is as calm, clear, and precise as if he were writ- 
ing his scientific essay on a standard of uniform length, 
or that on the method of obtaining fresh water from 
salt. The radical change of government is to be sought 
only in the last resort, when- government has become 
destructive of the fundamental rights of society, for the 
security of which it was established ; and then it may 
be altered or removed only for the purpose of erecting 



DOCTRINES OF THE DECLARATION. g5 

some better structure for the safety and happiness of 
the people. And, as if this cautious statement of the 
right of revolution were not enough, further cautions are 
given as to the application of a right, which is some- 
what analogous to the right of exploding gunpowder to 
arrest a conflagration : " Prudence, indeed, will dictate 
that governments long established should not be changed 
for light and transient causes ; and accordingly all expe- 
rience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to 
suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves 
by abolishing the forms to 'which they are accustomed. 
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing 
invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce 
them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their 
duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new 
guards for their future security. Such has been the 
patient sufferance of these Colonies ; and such is now the 
necessity which constrains them to alter their former sys- 
tems of government." 

The abstract right of revolution I do not require to 
argue. This is to society what the right of self-defence 
is to the individual. Since government is a function of 
society, if, through injustice and usurpation, the govern- 
ment becomes an unbearable oppression, destructive of the 
ends for which society exists, there must rest in society, 
which gives being and form to the state, an ultimate right 
to redress itself by displacing, or otherwise changing, the 
falsified government in the interest of a true and righteous 
ordering of the state. But this right, more, perhaps, than 
any other, needs to be qualified and restricted in the inter- 
est of society itself. So great are the calamities of civil 
war, so frightful the horrors of anarchy, that the overturn- 
ing of government by violence may be rightfully attempted 
only for the ends of justice, for the higher good. There 
must be in it that which appeals to the moral sense as just 
and right to warrant a movement that may deluge the 
land with blood, and send mourning into every house. 
This point, as we have seen, is guarded in the Declaration 
of Independence, which makes the right of revolution 
hinge upon the safety and happiness of the people when 
these are in peril of destruction from the existing govern- 
ment. 



86 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

But even with right motive upon its side, and a high 
and worthy end in view, a revolution should not be ven- 
tured upon merely to get rid of annoyances or grievances 
that reach not to the core of society, and that time might 
relieve or allay, but to redress accumulated and unbeara- 
ble wrongs for which there seems no other remedy. This 
rule, likewise, is fully recognized in the Declaration : no 
established government should be violently changed " for 
light and transient causes ; " but the people should rather 
" suffer while evils are sufferable." Abuses and usurpa- 
tions protracted and undisguised, tending always to 
destroy the rights of the subject, and bring him hope- 
lessly under despotic power, — these justify and demand a 
revolution as their remedy. Yet even at this point, when 
there is every legal and moral justification for recourse to 
arras, it may be well to pause, and see if there be a fair 
prospect of success to warrant the fearful responsibility of 
attempting it. As Lord Brougham has pithily said, " The 
evils must have become intolerable before the resistance is 
to be attempted : the parties whose rights are invaded 
must first exhaust every peaceful and orderly and lawful 
means of obtaining redress. An insurrection is only to be 
justified by the necessity which leaves no alternative ; 
and the probability of success is to be weighed, in order 
that a hopeless attempt may not involve the community in 
distress and confusion." Every one of these qualifying 
conditions was fully met in the state of the American 
Colonies when they put forth their Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. They were not revolutionists in theory, but 
defenders of society, and restorers of humanity, in funda- 
mental rights. Indeed, what is commonly conceived of as 
a political right of revolution, I prefer to characterize as 
the moral duty of resistance to tyranny and wrong, even 
to the extent of breaking up the whole established order 
of things, — a duty which, when the case arises, men must 
be ready to perform, or, for example's sake, to perish in the 
attempt ; and this moral distinction also is not wanting 
in the Declaration of Independence, which affirms, that, 
when it is the obvious design of a government to reduce a 
people under absolute despotism, " it is their right, it is 
their duty, to throw off such government." 



DOCTRINES OF THE DECLARATION. 87 

I come back, then, to the wisdom and moderation of this 
Declaration as one of the marvels of political history,; — that 
men in the very act of revolution, while .proclaiming their 
independence, were so careful to measure their rights and 
define their duties, and to guard the future peace and order 
of society against the perversion of the precedent they were 
compelled to set. They clothed their Revolution with the 
sanctity of duty by throwing around it the three condi- 
tions required to vindicate a war of society upon govern- 
ment : (1) The movement must be founded in justice, 
and have in view the deliverance of society from evil, and 
its re-establishment upon the sound basis of the public 
good; (2) The evils against which it protests must be 
grievous and unbearable wrongs ; (3) Revolution should 
appear to be the only, and at the same time a feasible, 
mode of redress. Bad government, at the worst, may be 
better than anarchy; and such are the horrors of civil 
war, that no people should dare attempt a revolution save 
in the last resort against desperate wrongs, and with a 
reasonable hope of success in the attempt to win justice 
by the sword. The French Constitution of June 24, 
1793, declared that " every order against a person, in cases 
and forms not specified by law, is arbitrary and tyranni- 
cal," — a proposition the truth of which is now generally 
admitted, except during a state of siege ; but the article 
added, " The person against whom such an order should be 
executed by force has the right to resist it by force," l 
— a declaration that goes far beyond the naked right of 
self-defence, and would authorize every citizen, and much 
more any body of citizens, when aggrieved by an unjust 
act of government, to resist by violence in the first in- 
stance, and hence would keep alive in the body politic a 
latent fever of rebellion, liable to break out upon the 
slightest provocation. Such a " right of revolution " 
would arm the citizens en permanence as a police against 
the government, and subject the authority of the State to 
the caprice and anarchy of individual wills. It might 
overthrow a bad government, but could never establish 
good and stable society. 

Mr. Jefferson, during his residence in Paris, seems to 

i Article 11. 



88 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

have had his head turned for a moment by the political 
philosophy that prepared the French Revolution. Writing 
from Paris in 1789, he said, " The earth belongs always to 
the living generation : they ma}^ manage it, then, and 
what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usu- 
fruct. They are masters, too, of their own persons ; and, 
consequently, may govern them as they please. But per- 
sons and property make the sum of the objects of govern- 
ment. The constitution and the laws of their predecessors 
are extinguished, then, in their natural course, with those 
whose will gave them being. This could preserve that 
being till it ceased to be itself, and no longer. Every con- 
stitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end 
of thirty-four years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act 
of force, and not of right." 1 Again he wrote from Paris, 
" The late rebellion in Massachusetts has given more 
alarm than I think it should have done. Calculate that 
one rebellion in thirteen States, in the course of eleven 
years, is but one for each State in a century and a half. 
No country should be so long without a revolution." 2 

This theory of revolution would make of government a 
pendulum, but without even a fixed centre of oscillation : 
it would build the State upon the slope of a volcano or 
the bank of a mountain-torrent on a deliberate calculation 
of an eruption or an inundation once in a generation. It 
ignores the fact that men of at least three several genera- 
tions are always mingled together, and profit contempora- 
neously by each other's labors ; for, though vital statistics 
have averaged a generation at thirty-three years, the 
curtain does not fall upon the stage of life three times in a 
century that the earth may be cleared of one generation, 
and another may appear. Generations do not march on 
and off the stage in platoons. Men are born and grow, 
and society and the state are things of growth ; for there 
enter into the constitution of society and of government 
certain ethical principles that have a permanent life. 
When one generation with toil and blood has won free- 
dom of thought and freedom of conscience, and has caused 
these to be incorporated with the political organism of 
society, no after-generation is at liberty to vacate the 

i Letter to Madison: Works, iii. 106. 2 Ibid., ii. 331. 



DOCTRINES OF THE DECLARATION. £9 

charter of these rights. Human society is organic, and 
exists in continuity, having certain uniform, transmissible, 
and indefeasible interests, that each generation, in turn, 
receives as a heritage from the past in trust for the fu- 
ture. 1 The extravagances of Mr. Jefferson, just quoted, 
reflect the French philosophy of the eighteenth century 
concerning man, liberty, the social compact, and kindred 
themes of Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire : they illustrate the 
vicious maxim of Diderot, that " the first step towards 
philosophy is incredulity; " and would make the first step 
towards society a mutual distrust, the first step towards 
the state a chronic insecurity. The American doctrine of 
revolution, on the contrary, was clearly and consistently 
maintained by John Adams. " The means and measures of 
ours," he wrote, " may teach mankind that revolutions are 
no trifles ; that they ought never to be undertaken rashly ; 
nor without deliberate consideration and sober reflection ; 
nor without a solid, immutable, eternal foundation of 
justice and humanity ; nor without a people possessed of 
intelligence, fortitude, and integrity sufficient to carry 
them, with steadiness, patience, and perseverance, through 
all the vicissitudes of fortune, the fiery trials and melan- 
choly disasters they may have to encounter." 2 All these 
conditions were fulfilled in the men who led the American 
Revolution ; and, when Adams thus characterized it, he 
had before him its results of more than forty years. It is 
due to Jefferson to say that he emerged from the visionary 
philosophy of the French revolutionary era, and returned 
to the sober discrimination that marks the declaration of 
the American Revolution ; 3 but his momentary aberra- 
tion serves to point more sharply the distinction between 
the notions of man, libert}^, society, and the state, that 
mark the two greatest events of the last century, — the 
American Revolution and the French. The American 
Revolution based itself upon a declaration of the equal 
rights of men, and issued in a republic under a constitu- 
tion approved by the people : the French Revolution also 

1 I have expanded this argument in an address to the Union League 
Cluh, entitled Revolution against Free Government not a Right, but a 
Crime. 

2 Written in 1818: Works, x. 283. 

3 Letter to Lafayette, Feb. 14, 1815: Works, vol. vi. 421. 



90 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

put forth a declaration of the rights of man, and resolved 
the nation into a republic with a constitution. But at this 
point the analogy ceases ; and the two movements, starting 
from the same idea, and aiming at the same end, diverge 
as widely in their methods and their philosophy as in their 
practical results to the nations and to mankind. The 
American Colonies revolted against the usurpation of a 
government that distance and alienation had rendered 
almost foreign, and threw off forms that had dwindled to 
shadows. The French nation revolted not onlv against a 
government and its oppressions, but against the whole 
constitution of society upon its own soil : the monarchy, 
the nobility, the clergy, the body of landholders, the ad- 
ministration of education, of justice, of police, the civil and 
criminal codes, the entire fabric and material of what for 
ages had been the social structure of France, were tumbled 
into the abyss; and from that chaos of terror and blood it 
was sought to create a new world of order, freedom, light. 
But the masterful philosophy that shaped and guided the 
American Revolution was not there. Mirabeau poss< 
this; but it perished with that "head " which was his only 
"party." Lafayette essayed it; but France had no Wash- 
ington : and so the nation, stripped of king and priest, 
of state and church, of loyalty and reverence, of form and 
precedent, put its faith in a philosophy of freedom and of 
man, that began in the negation of that spiritual life which 
alone makes man worthy of freedom, or freedom a boon to 
man. 

It is but just to the French Revolution to say, that, if its 
excesses were monstrous, its provocations were also mon- 
strous. If it filled Europe with the stench of its abomina- 
tions, this was because society was already rotten to the 
core. One cannot fairly compare the French Revolution 
with the American without allowing for the difference 
between the two nations in geographical position, in his- 
torical and social antecedents, and also in race-training 
and temperament. France was not left, has never since 
till now been left, to work out her problems alone. She 
has never been free from the necessity of maintaining a 
great army ; and, with a nation under arms, freedom is 
alwavs in duress. But, after all these concessions, there 



DOCTRINES OF THE DECLARATION. 91 

remains a vital divergence in the philosophy of the two 
movements. 

The French theorists mistook the source of power for 
the foundation of freedom. Perceiving that power in the 
State should emanate directly or indirectly from the peo- 
ple, they fancied that universal suffrage was the equiva- 
lent and the guaranty of personal and national. freedom. 
Borrowing a phrase from the American Declaration of 
Independence, they, too, declared that "government is 
instituted to insure to man the free use of his natural and 
inalienable rights : " but they defined these rights as 
" equality, liberty, security, property," and asserted that 
" every citizen has the right of taking part in the legis- 
lation ; " thus practically merging all human rights in the 
right of suffrage, as they had merged all political power 
in the sovereignty of the people. To them political lib- 
erty was not a means of securing men in their proper free- 
dom, but was itself the end, the supreme good, of man and 
of society. " The French Republic," said they, " places 
the constitution under the guaranty of all virtues." 1 
Thus they traced freedom to a political foundation, and 
vested it in a political form. Regarding this as the ulti- 
mate good, they declared, " When government violates 
the rights of the people, insurrection of the people, and 
of every single part of it, is the most sacred of its rights, 
and the highest of its duties." 2 This constitution was 
ordered to be engraved on tablets, and set up in the hall 
of legislation and in public places ; but, having been 
accepted by the people in their primary assemblies, it 
came back to be strangled in the convention that gave it 
birth. To-day again one reads in Paris, on the palaces, 
the churches, the museums, the libraries, the parks, the 
abattoirs, the very cemeteries, Propriete Nationale, Liberte, 
Egalite, Fraternity — to be wiped out, perhaps, by the mop 
of the next regime. 

The American Declaration of Independence, on the 
contrary, makes the essence of freedom not political, but 
ethical, — the attribute of man as a spiritual person : and 
the State, which by forms of political liberty is to guard 
this freedom, which is older and higher than itself, derives 

1 Constitution, Art. 123. 2 Declaration, Art. 35. 



92 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

from it something of its spiritual dignity ; so that the body 
politic is possessed also of a moral personality. Hence 
the Declaration does not couch natural rights in political 
forms, but makes the whole nature of man — physical, 
intellectual, and moral — the basis of rights for which 
political society is bound to care, and before which gov- 
ernments must fall when they attempt to destroy the 
rights, inherent in personality, with which man is endowed 
by his Creator. As a sentient being, man has the right of 
life ; but why is his life a right girt about with law, when 
he takes at will the life of other animals, and feeds upon 
theirs to sustain his own? As a creature of intelligence 
and will, man is capable of freedom, and has the right to 
liberty of thought, speech, movement, action. But why 
is liberty a right to him, when at his pleasure he puts 
restraint upon other animals, and makes them his servants? 
As a being of a moral nature, with national affections, 
imagination, taste, the power of choosing good, capacity 
of virtue, man is capable of happiness, — a term that is 
never degraded to the animal passions and pleasures, — a 
term descriptive only of an intelligent, five, moral person. 
The good of such a person is higher than all laws of 
nature, higher than all material things and all conven- 
tional forms. The pursuit of happiness is an inalienable 
right, with which he is endowed by his Creator. As a 
social being, he retains all these original qualities and 
endowments: they cannot be alienated by social contract ; 
they cannot be merged in political forms. Society is but 
an instrument for the more perfect development of this 
transcendent person in the best use and enjoyment of life, 
through liberty and the pursuit of happiness ; and society 
compounded of such personalities is itself a spiritual 
organism, with the right to freedom and to the most con- 
summate good for the whole body and for all its parts. 
Before this spiritual dignity of manhood, government 
must bow as to a nature higher than its own. Govern- 
ment cannot use man as a mere numerical factor in the 
social machine. Because of this original, spiritual dig- 
nity of his nature, government must make his life, his lib- 
erty, his happiness, its care, and see that these have their 
fullest play. Before this inherent, inalienable dignity, 



DOCTRINES OF THE DECLARATION. 93 

government must go down, if it shall dare infringe upon 
the natural rights of man. And yet, because the well- 
being of man is above all other considerations, even that 
which threatens him with evil should not be rashly over- 
thrown, lest the violence should do him greater harm. 
There is the American doctrine of man, of freedom, of 
government, of revolution, — that man, who is first in order 
of being, should have a political and social state suited to 
his endowments; that the true life of society is to be 
sought, not by perpetual revolution, but by progressive 
evolution ; not by overturning, but by uplifting. 

The French philosophy of the eighteenth century failed 
to construct a free and stable society, because it failed of 
that spiritual conception of society and man that under- 
lies the American Declaration. The philosophy of Mill, 
Comte, Buckle, fails for the same reason. Neither mate- 
rialism nor positivism can provide a basis for freedom in 
the individual or in the community. You cannot have 
the play of " Hamlet " without the Prince of Denmark ; 
and, in the great drama of freedom, } r ou cannot move for- 
ward without that grand impersonation of freedom, — 
man, as endowed by his Creator with the gift and capacity 
of liberty and happiness. Society can give no man free- 
dom : all men are created equal. 

. " What constitutes a State ? 
Not high-raised battlements or labored mound, 

Thick wall or moated gate ; 
Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crowned. 

No: men, high-minded men, — 

Men who their duties know, 
But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain, — 

These constitute a State." 

Upon the principles thus laid down, the Declaration of 
Independence proceeds to justify the rejection of British 
rule by an enumeration of specific grievances. The king 
is charged with attempting to subvert the legislative 
power in the Colonies, by suspending legislatures, by dis- 
solving them, by refusing to sanction their acts ; by deny- 
ing new elections ; by forcing upon the Colonies the direct 
legislation of the British Parliament, without permitting 
them to be represented in the Parliament, or even to be 



94 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

heard there by petition. The king is charged with 
attempting to control or to corrupt the judiciary by mak- 
ing the judges dependent on his will alone ; by exempting 
his officers, civil and military, from trial within the Colo- 
nies for offences there committed ; by abolishing in many 
cases the right of trial by jury ; by arresting, without war- 
rant of law, colonists for alleged offences against the gov- 
ernment, and transporting them to England, to be there 
punished by arbitrary power. The king is charged with 
setting up a military jurisdiction over the Colonies, mak- 
ing the military independent of and superior to the civil 
power by quartering armed troops upon the Colonies, 
sending foreign mercenaries to subdue them, and by incit- 
ing negroes and Indians to insurrection. The king is 
charged with attempting to destroy the prosperity of the 
Colonies by restricting immigration, refusing grants of 
lands, cutting off trade, and imposing taxes without con- 
sent. And, as the crowning grievance, the king is 
charged with taking away the charters of the Colonies, 
and attempting to subvert their fundamental right of 
local government. For years, these growing usurpations 
had been opposed by petition and remonstrance, but in 
vain. It was evident that the object of the king was the 
establishment of an absolute tyranny over the Colonics. 
He was trying to subjugate them by force, — ravaging 
their coasts, and burning their towns; and there was 
nothing left for them but to fall back upon their inalien- 
able rights, and make a stand. The proofs of these several 
charges they had already laid before the world. History 
has ratified their action ; and mankind confess their obli- 
gation to the framers of that great charter of freedom, 
which was the first to formulate the functions of govern- 
ment in harmony with the natural rights of man, and to 
cement government and people, law and liberty, power 
and right, in a way that should endure the strain of war 
and the severer strain of success. 

Two other grievances, not named in the Declaration, 
had strong influence in provoking the Revolution, — the 
slave-trade, which had been forced upon the Colonies in 
the interest of British commerce ; and the attempt to force 
upon all the Colonies the English Church Establishment, 



DOCTRINES OF THE DECLARATION-. 95 

which had always existed in some. In the first draught 
of the Declaration, preserved by Mr. Jefferson, there was 
a protest against the slave-trade, which in vigor, and pun- 
gency of rhetoric, surpassed any thing else in the docu- 
ment, and which, from the pen of a slaveholder, is a faith- 
ful testimony to reason and conscience struggling for the 
right. Let it speak for itself : — 

" He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating 
its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant 
people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into 
slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their 
transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of 
infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. 
Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and 
sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative 
attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce ; and. that 
this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, 
he is now exciting these very people to rise in arms among us, and to 
purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering 
the people on whom he also obtruded them, thus paying off former 
crimes committed against the liberties of one people with crimes 
which he urges them to commit against the lives of another." 

The fact that Jefferson wrote these words in a Declara- 
tion that he expected the entire Congress would adopt 
and send forth to the world, and that John Adams, Ben- 
jamin Franklin, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman, 
his colleagues on the committee, agreed to report his 
draught to the Congress for adoption, shows that the au- 
thors of that paper were not vaporing about universal lib- 
erty to cover their own struggle for independence, but were 
honestly devoted to the rights of man, and ready to rest 
the argument for liberty upon manhood, without thought 
of race, color, or condition. But the conditions were new 
and strange. They were attempting a great revolution 
upon most unequal terms : without unanimity, they must 
fail; and, to secure that unanimity, the moral and logical 
conviction of the many yielded to the supposed interests 
and feelings of the few. Jefferson writes in his autobiog- 
raphy, " The clause reprobating the enslaving the inhab- 
itants of Africa was struck out in complaisance to South 
Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to re- 
strain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, 



96 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

still wished to continue it. Our Northern brethren also, 
I believe, felt a little tender under these censures; for 
though their people had very few slaves themselves, yet 
they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to 
others." l 

It is easy now to say, that, in slurring over the fact of 
slavery, they inade a fearful mistake ; that they fastened 
upon the front of liberty a stigma that only the blood of 
the nation could wash out. It is easy to say, that with a 
higher faith in right and duty, a nobler courage and sacri- 
fice for man, a loftier vision of the future, they would have 
set freedom and humanity a century forward. Can we be 
so sure of this ? Let us not bedaub their sturdy work 
with our cheap rhetoric. They were honest, and did what 
they could. Their call was to make a nation ; and, spite 
of all defects, they did make a nation, in whose fibre free- 
dom and manhood were so ingrained, that, when recalled 
to the consciousness of its first principles, the nation was 
capable of restoring the rights of man at cost of three 
thousand million dollars and three hundred thousand 
lives. "Cursed be he that setteth light by his fathers; 
and let all the people say, Amen." 2 

That the rumor of erecting the Colonies into an episco- 
pate of the Established Church fired the zeal for revolu- 
tion, we have the explicit testimony of John Adams, who 
says that " this contributed as much as any other cause to 
arouse the attention, not only of the inquiring mind, but 
of the common people, and urge them to close thinking on 
the constitutional authority of Parliament over the Colo- 
nies; " 3 and in 1768 the Assembly of the Province of Mas- 

i Works, vol. i. 1!). 2 Deut. xxvii. 10. 

3 Works, x. IS,-). 

" If Parliament could tax us, they could establish the Church of Eng- 
land, with all its creeds, articles, tests, ceremonies, and titles, and prohibit 

all other churches as conventicles and schism-shops " (John Adams: 
Works, x. L'87). This pretence was, in fact, set up by Dr. Sherlock. 
Bishop of London, in a letter to the king in council, February, 17.")!): 
"The Church of England being established in America, the Independents, 
and other dissenters who went to settle in New England, could only have 
a toleration" (Colonial Documents of New York, vii. 3C0). The 'bishop 
seems to have argued in this wise: The name "Virginia" was at first 
vaguely given to The whole coast of North America between the thirty- 
fourth and the forty-fifth degrees of north latitude; that is. from Cape 
Fear to Halifax. In" the charter of the actual Colony of Virginia, it was 
stipulated that religion should be established according to the doctrine and 
rites of the Church of England; and now, a hundred and fifty years later, 



DOCTRLNES OF THE DECLARATION. 97 

sachusetts instructed their agent in London strenuously 
to oppose such an episcopate, as a peril to liberty, civil 
and religious. 1 Though this grievance was not named in 
the Declaration, the founders of the government provided 
against such a peril by abolishing all religious tests for 
political office, and enacting that " Congress shall make no 
law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting 
the free exercise thereof." 

But as their excessive caution in regard to slavery 
entailed upon the nation the conflict of a century, so this 
unbounded confidence in liberty threatens the opening 
century with conflict with a spiritual despotism that 
seeks to use the forms of freedom for controlling the votes, 
the schools, the laws, the moneys, of the republic, in the 
interest of a foreign potentate the most absolute and 
unyielding. Yet the principles of the Declaration are 
equal to this emergency. A new danger will rouse 
Americans once more to the consciousness of their history 
and of their trust ; and the nation that first emancipated 
itself from political despotism, and next from domestic 

when the boundaries! of Virginia were definitely fixed, and other Colonies 
had their limits and their rights defined by charters, the bishop put forth 
the preposterous claim, that, by virtue of the first charter of Virginia, the 
Church of England should be held to be established in New England also. 
How the people of Boston relished this doctrine is shown by a caricature 
in the Political Register of 1769, entitled An Attempt to land a Bishop 
in America. A ship is at the wharf: the lord-bishop is in full canonicals, 
his carriage, crosier, and mitre on deck. The people appear with a banner 
inscribed with " Liberty and Freedom of Conscience," and are shouting, 
"No lords, spiritual or temporal, in New England ! " " Shall they be obliged 
to maintain bishops that cannot maintain themselves?" They pelt the 
bishop with Locke, Sidney on Government, Barclay's Apology, Calvin's 
Works: and the unhappy" prelate is glad to take refuge in the shrouds, 
crying, '"Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace." This protest 
was not against a church, but against an enforced Establishment; and the 
books show in what strong reading the colonists were nourished. (See the 
picture in Thornton's Pulpit of the American Revolution.) 

The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts was 
active in this scheme for establishing the Church through an American 
episcopate, to be supported, of course, by tithes. In October, 1776, Dr. 
Charles Inglis, Rector of Trinity Church, New York, wrote to the society, 
"The present rebellion is certainly one of the most causeless, unprovoked, 
and unnatural that ever disgraced any country. . . . Although civil 
liberty was the ostensible object, yet it is now past all doubt that an 
abolition of the Church of England was one of the principal springs of the 
dissenting leaders' conduct." He testifies that "all the society's mission- 
aries in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, have proved themselves 
faithful, loyal subjects," shutting up their churches rather than cease 
praying for the king; and he urges the episcopate as an encouragement 
to such fidelity (Doc. Hist, of New York, iii. 637 seq.). 

1 Life of Sam. Adams, i. 157. 



98 CENTENNIAL OE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

slavery, will vindicate the independence of society and the 
state against the worse tyranny of ecclesiastical interfer- 
ence and control. Just because, in the immortal concept 
of the Declaration, man is a spiritual creation, endowed 
with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of good, so 
much the more must society keep intact its spiritual 
organism, its moral personality, the independence of which 
is life, liberty, happiness. 



NOTE. 

Since the foregoing Lecture was prepared for the press, I have had 
the pleasure of reading the more prominent orations which the cele- 
bration of the Centenary of Independence called forth in the United 
States, — that of the Hon. "William M. Evarts at Philadelphia, that 
of the Rev. 11. S. Storrs, D.D., at New York, that of the Hon. Charles 
Francis Adams at Taunton, and that of the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop 
at Boston. It is a fine testimony to the Declaration as a document of 
political ethics, that it could furnish to minds of such high and varied 
powers the theme of thoughtful and admiring discourse from so many 
different points of view. Neither orator crossed the track of the 
others, nor did the orations run in parallel lines of thought; yet each 
found in the Declaration — its antecedents, its incidents, its princi 
its results — matter for a discourse of more than ordinary fulness 
and power ; and it is only when one has read the whole four of these 
masterful productions, and gathered into one their total impressions, 
that he begins to realize how great an event, in history, in philosophy, 
and in the political and social ordering of the world, was the utter- 
ance that went forth from Independence Hall in Philadelphia on 
the Fourth of July, 177G. All these orators have passed the period 
of youthful enthusiasm, and neither of them was ever addicted to 
extravagance of speech. They have had large training and expe- 
rience in law. divinity, statesmanship, letters, history; yet with every 
one of them the theme tasked the powers of the orator, as it before 
had tasked Choate, Everett, Webster. Nothing that was said about 
the Declaration could approach the silent eloquence of the instrument 
itself, as the original parchment, with the autographs of John Han- 
cock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Roger Sherman, Oliver Wolcott, 
Benjamin Franklin, Charles Carroll of Carrolllon, Thomas Jefferson, 
and the sixfold row of worthies, was held up to the gaze of thousands 
on the spot where it was first read to the people. It could have been 
said of this parchment, as Webster said of the Bunker-hill Monument, 
"It is itself the orator of this occasion. ... It looks, it speaks, it acts, 
to the full comprehension of every American mind, and the awakening 



NOTE. 99 

of glowing enthusiasm in every American heart, surpassing all that 
the study of the closet, or even the inspiration of genius, can produce. 
... Its speech is of patriotism and courage, of civil and religious 
liberty, of free government, of the moral improvement and elevation 
of mankind, and of the immortal memory of those who, with heroic 
devotion, have sacrificed their lives for their country." 1 The Decla- 
ration was one of those epoch-making events whose influence can be 
measured only with 

" The golden compasses, prepared 
In God's eternal store to circumscribe 
This universe and all created things." 

Having finished the preceding analysis of the Declaration before 
1 was favored with the light which these several orators have thrown 
upon it, I prefer to let that stand as it was, and to put into the form 
of a supplementary note such further reflections as the orations have 
awakened. It is with diffidence that I set forth, or rather emphasize, 
another interpretation of the instrument than any made prominent 
by my scholarly colleagues; and it is with deference that I diverge at 
any point from their historical perspective of the event and its results. 
These orators agree in separating the philosophical substance of the 
Declaration from the political reasons given for declaring the Colonies 
"free and independent States." The whole virtue of the instrument 
lies in the first sentence of the second paragraph, beginning, "We 
hold these truths to be self-evident." Of this Mr. Adams says, " I 
have considered these significant words as vested with a virtue so 
subtle as certain ultimately to penetrate the abodes of mankind all 
over the world ; but I separate them altogether from the solemn array 
of charges against King George which immediately follow in the 
Declaration." Now, to maintain for the Declaration its just place in 
political philosophy and among the few great historic charters of 
human freedom, we must be careful, on the one hand, not to claim for 
it too much, whether in intent or in result, and, on the other hand, 
not to obscure the essential truths of the instrument by forms or acts 
that were but incidental or consequential. In particular, we should 
not look to the Declaration for too much of novelty in political theory, 
nor too absolute a transformation in political forms. Mr. Evarts, for 
instance, quotes with approval the saying of Burke, " A great revo- 
lution has happened, — a revolution made, not by chopping and chan- 
ging of power in any of the existing States, but by the appearance of a 
new State, of a new species, in a new part of the globe. It has made 
as great a change in all the relations and balances and gravitations of 
power as the appearance of a new planet would in the system of the 
solar world." Applied to the Constitution of the United States, which 
went into effect in 1789, this simile would be as accurate as it is 
beautiful : that did indeed mark " a new species " of political organi- 
zation. But democracy was not new, a republic was not new, at 
the time of the Revolution. Burke was not ignorant of the prece- 
dents in Greek and Roman history, in the Italian republics, in the 
Federation of the Swiss, in the Dutch Republic ; all which exempli- 

i "Works of Daniel Webster, i. 86. 



100 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

fied more or less the doctrine of popular government. The American 
Revolution did not, like its successor in France, begin with a procla- 
mation of the republic as thenceforth to mark a new era in the calen- 
dar, and give date to all decrees. Concerning forms of government, 
the Declaration is absolutely silent. It utters the voice of " a free 
people" resolved to disown a "tyrant" who is "unfit to be their 
ruler;" but it does not propose any change of government more 
specific than the quiet and orderly transformation of the " United 
Colonies " into "free and independent States." The act dissolving 
" all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain," 
though it constituted "a new State," did not create " a new species " 
of State. 

Neither is it quite correct to speak of the Declaration as having abol- 
ished from American society all castes, ranks, orders, and all heredi- 
tary titles, privileges, and distinctions, whether of State or Church. 
In truth, excepting the occasional attempt of some royal governor or 
council to ape an aristocracy, none of these things existed in the 
Colonies, nor had been there from their first foundation. " The arts, 
sciences, and literature of England, came over with the settlers. That 
great portion of the common law which regulates the social and per- 
sonal relations and conduct of men came also. The jury came; the 
habeas corpus came ; the testamentary power came; and the law of 
inheritance and descent came also, except that part of it which recog- 
nizes the rights of primogeniture, which cither did not come at all, 
or soon gave way to the rule of equal partition of estates among chil- 
dren. But the monarchy did not come, nor the aristocracy, nor the 
church, as an estate of the realm. Political institutions were to 
be framed anew, such as should be adapted to the state of things. 
But it could not be doubtful what should be the nature and character 
of these institutions. A general social equality prevailed among the 
settlers; and an equality of political rights seemed the natural, if not 
the necessary, consequence." * Thus the whole history and training 
of the colonists had established the fact that Burke read with such 
philosophic clearness, — "that the disposition of the people of America 
is wholly averse to any other than a free government." 2 Hence it 
was no novelty to them, no creation of " a new species " of State in 
severing the one tie that held them in nominal allegiance to the 
throne, to cut loose from an established church, an hereditary pe 
and every artificial caste and privileged order in the State. Living 
without these, they had naturally developed and strengthened that 
liberty, which, as Englishmen, they had inherited and enjoyed, without, 
perhaps, looking farther back than to Magna Ckarta for its origin and 
justification, indeed, at the outset, what Mr. Burke said of the 
English Revolution was quite as true of the American. — " The Revo- 
lution was made to preserve our ancient indisputable laws and liber- 
ties, and that ancient constitution of government which is our only 
security for law and liberty." 3 Indeed, Mr. Burke himself said he 

1 Daniel Webster, Oration on the Completion of the Bunker-hill Monu- 
ment : Works, i. 101. 

2 Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, 1777. 

3 Reflections on the Revolution in France. 



NOTE. 101 

considered "the Americans as standing at that time, and in that 
controversy, in the same relation to England as England did to 
King James II. in 1688." x In their earlier struggles -with king 
and parliament, the colonists contended for their " rights as English- 
men ' ' against the encroachments of arbitrary power. In his exami- 
nation by the House of Commons, Franklin testified that they resisted 
the Stamp Act by virtue of "the common rights of Englishmen; " 
and the " Declaration of Rights " made by the first Continental Con- 
gress in 1771 was based mainly upon the English Constitution, and 
asserted, that, by derivation from their ancestors, the colonists were 
'• entitled to all the rights, liberties, and immunities of free and 
natural-born subjects within the realm of England." 

But the Declaration of Independence advanced beyond all charters, 
customs, grants, laws, heritages, to the natural and inalienable rights 
of man as the foundation of liberty and the sacred trust of govern- 
ment. As a purely philosophical conception, this was not original 
with Jefferson. In 1761 James Otis had said, " The first principle 
and great end of government is to provide for the best good of all 
the people." "Nothing but life and liberty are actually heritable." 
" The colonists are men : the colonists are therefore free-born ; for, by 
the law of nature, all men are free-born, white or black." " A time 
may come when Parliament shall declare every American charter 
void ; but the natural, inherent, and inseparable rights of the colo- 
nists as men and as citizens would remain, and, whatever became of 
charters, can never be abolished till the general conflagration." 2 It is 
highly probable that Jefferson had read the tract of Otis that made 
so great a stir on both sides of the Atlantic. But these sentiments 
were not new with Otis : a century before, Algernon Sidney had gone 
to the scaffold for the right of the people to govern themselves ; and 
Jefferson owns to having read Sidney on Government. In the letter 
that Sidney prepared as his dying testament, he re-affirmed the prin- 
ciples of his "Discourses of Government," — "that God hath left 
nations to the liberty of setting up such governments as best please 
themselves ; " and " that magistrates are set up for the good of 
nations, not nations for the honor or glory of magistrates." 

The same doctrine was taught from the Scriptures by the early 
divines of New England. These devout students of the Bible learned 
from that book, more than any other, the first principles of civil and 
religious liberty. In May. 1637, Thomas Hooker, first pastor of Hart- 
ford, preached a sermon on the foundations of civil government, in 
which he laid down these positions : — 

" I. That the choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people 
by God's own allowance. 

" II. The privilege of election, which belongs to the people, there- 
fore, must not be exercised according to their humors, but according 
to the blessed will and law of God. 

" III. They who have power to appoint officers and magistrates, it 
is in their power also to set the bounds and limitations of the power 
and place unto which they call them." 

1 Appeal from the New to the Old "Whigs. 

2 See in Bancroft, v. 203, 204. 



102 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

But these had been the scattered utterances of individuals, — food 
for reflection in the closet, but not yet the basis of action in affairs. 
Now, that which the Declaration did was to put the doctrine of the 
natural equality of men in their essential rights, and the duty of gov- 
ernment to secure these rights, into the form of axioms as the basis of 
political society, and to enforce these self-evident truths by the will 
of a whole people. The people came to the consciousness of holding 
their rights, not as Englishmen, but as men. In defence of liberties 
which the crown and parliament were seeking to revoke or suppress 
as mere chartered privileges of British subjects, they had been driven 
back upon those natural and inalienable rights which were antece- 
dent to all charters, and which made them as men superior to gov- 
ernments, which could have lawful existence only as the servants and 
guardians of these personal rights in the collective interest of society; 
and the consciousness of these rights they declared not as a thesis in 
political philosophy, nor a theory of government, but by embodying 
the personality of the nation in these self-evident truths. This, too, 
in words so few, so clear, so exact, so just, so strong, so glowing, that 
nothing can be added to or taken from their original statement : 
w - We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created 
equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inaliena- 
ble rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap- 
piness ; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among 
men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; 
that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these 
ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to 
institute a liew government, laying its foundation on such principles, 
and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most 
likely to effect their safety and happiness." Here stands forth a 
people clothed with rights in its proper personality, and therefore 
entitled to clothe itself with a form of government according to its 
own nature and will. There is no going behind this statement, and 
there is no going beyond it. I must repeat with emphasis, that the 
equality and rights asserted in the Declaration are personal and natu- 
ral endowments, and not political claims nor concessions. All men, 
as individuals, are equal in the right to life, to liberty of personal 
action, and to the pursuit of good. The function of the State is 
defined by this normal equality of rights ; but these rights are not in 
their origin or nature political. Bluntschli 1 has shown, that, strictly 
speaking, political equality can come into existence only within the 
organized community of the State ; and also, that if. in the strict 
meaning of political equality, all individuals were simply and exactly 
equal, the State could not possibly exist, since the concej3tion of politi- 
cal inequality is necessarily involved in the fundamental distinction 
of the governing and the governed. Equality by nature, equality be- 
fore the law, and equality of treatment by government, are not politi- 
cal equality ; and political equality is not affirmed by the Declaration. 
The most ignorant and imbruted man in the United States has the 
same right that I have to live, to choose his place and mode of living, 

1 Allgemeineu Statsrechts, b. i., c. 9, § iv. 



NOTE. 103 

to make his way in the world, and to share the good things of life to 
the fullest measure that he can attain by the free use of his powers. 
The government is bound to see that he has these rights to the largest 
degree compatible with the same rights in others, if the government 
tramples Upon his rights, it tramples also upon mine ; and I am bound 
to make common cause with him against any encroachment upon 
rights that by nature are " equal " to us both. But whether these 
rights can be best secured to the community and to himself by mak- 
ing this 'ignorant, imbruted creature the government, or a partaker in 
the government, is a question that the Declaration leaves to political 
philosophy and the experience of society. 

No doubt, as Mr. Evarts has clearly shown, " as to the Constitution 
of the new State, its species is disclosed by its existence. The con- 
dition of the people is equal : they have the habits of freemen, and 
possess the institutions of liberty. When the political connection 
with the parent State is dissolved, they will be self-governing and 
self -governed of necessity." But, at the same time, we must be careful 
not to confound the declarative act of 177G with the creative and form- 
ative act of 1789. The Constitution was the product of consummate 
wisdom as to the form of a free government, — "a new State of a new 
species;" but the Declaration stands supreme as a declaration of 
political ethics. The Constitution has been, and may yet be, 
amended ; the Declaration never. The Constitution, and the govern- 
ment established under it, may even be subverted, and pass away; but 
the truths of the Declaration must remain " self-evident " so long as 
civil society shall exist on the earth. The forms in which truth is 
embodied may change or perish ; but truth as thought is immortal. 
The Constitution is a form : the Declaration is a thought. It is the 
felicity of American liberty that it combines the highest philosophi- 
cal thought of liberty with the best structural forms of liberty as yet 
devised. The strength of English liberty is, that it is a thing of 
growth, and possesses at once the vitality drawn from the soil, and the 
veneration inspired by transmission from ancestors. It lives on from 
generation to generation through inherited institutions, without the 
guaranties of a written constitution. French liberty, on the other 
hand, began with the revolutionary proclamation of natural rights, 
and has always attached a special virtue to the formula of a constitu- 
tion. Now, American liberty combines the advantages of both, and 
thus counterbalances the defects of either. All that was valid and 
vital in English liberty was carried by the earlier emigrants across 
the sea. The common heritage was theirs ; and they took with them 
the institutions of law and custom by which this was guarded and 
transmitted. They built society upon that foundation. When, at 
length, this hereditary freedom was assailed, they at first shored it up 
with charters and precedents, then laid underneath it the broader, 
surer foundation of the rights that God had given to all men alike, 
and afterward built about the whole structure of liberty, natural 
and institutional, the strong buttresses of the Constitution. No 
principle of liberty has yet been thought out that is not already in 
the Declaration; no ordinance of freedom has yet been devised that is 
not already in the common law and the Constitution. 



104 CENTENNIAL OE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

I trust that this analysis has redeemed for the Declaration its true 
glory, showing how, as a philosophic thought, it stands above the Con- 
stitution, which is a political form. The Constitution did indeed 
create '•' a new State of a new species : " the Declaration proclaims 
how every State, of whatever species, must be ordered, if it would 
justify its claim to be. It formulated human personality, as by the will 
of God, the chief factor and concern of civil government. 1 But, 
while w r e assert for the Declaration the foremost place in the political 
thought of mankind, w r e should be careful not to claim too much for 
it in the line of direct, visible results. Mr. Adams thus sums up 
" the results arrived at by the enunciation of the great law of liberty 
in 1776 : — 

" 1. It opened the way to the present condition of France. 

" 2. It brought about perfect security for liberty on the high and 
narrow seas. 

" 3. It led the w T ay in abolishing the slave-trade, which, in its turn, 
prompted the abolition of slavery itself by Great Britain, France, 
Russia, and, last of all, by our own country too." 2 

This statement is marked by the judicial clearness and fairness so 
characteristic of Mr. Adams ; and it is, in the main, borne out by the 
history of the century. Yet, in tracing a connection between the move- 
ments of freedom in the first century of our national life and the 
Declaration with which that century opened, we should be upon our 
guard against the logical fallacy, post hoc propter hoc. In the closer 
contact of nations induced by modern civilization, influences are so 
ramified, and there is so much simultaneousnesa as well as consenta- 
neousness of movement, that it is not easy to trace single events to a 
specific antecedent. At the first, the successful achievement of inde- 
pendence by the United States, and the inauguration of a republican 
government, stimulated in other lands the "fever of popular govern* 
ment. For a time, a declaration of rights and a constitution were 
regarded as the panacea for the woes of political society. By and by 
experience showed there were cases in which the remedy might be 
worse than the disease: still, for long, the example of a thriving, 
peaceful nation without royalty, aristocracy, establishment, or army, 
and almost without taxes, was the envy of foreign peoples, and the 
standing argument for government by the people. Then, by degrees, 
the blot of slavery grew so large and dense, that it overshadowed the 
lustre of free institutions. Next came internal commotions and a 
civil war, that at first revealed weakness, and the possibility of dis- 
ruption. The old charm of peace and union was gone. The mag- 
nificent uprising of the nation, the development of military resources 
and capacity, and the final success of the war for the Union, together 
with the overthrow of slavery, not only revived confidence in the 
republic, but lifted it into admiration. Then followed the era of 
taxes, extravagance, paper-money, official corruption, and of universal 
depression in finance and trade, which has suddenly turned popular 
government into a political scandal. Through all these phases of 

1 See Speech at the Centennial Dinner in London. 

2 Speech at Taunton. 



NOTE. 105 

American influence upon foreign affairs, it is difficult to trace with 
calmness and certainty the results for good of the Declaration of 
Independence upon the destiny of mankind. Still those results are 
even now greater than we can measure. On the one hand, we must 
free the Declaration from all failures and delinquencies of the Amer- 
ican people under it ; and, on the other hand, we should remember 
that it is too soon to look for its results in corporate forms in human 
society. It required seventeen centuries for Christ's doctrine of the 
divine birthright and brotherhood of man to work itself up to the 
point of public proclamation as the foundation of the State. Other 
toiling, groaning ages may yet attend the realization of that Declara- 
tion in emancipated, self-governing peoples. But the day of redemp- 
tion is sure. Science has taught us the conservation of energy 
through the transformation of work into heat, and of heat into work. 
The blows the men of '76 struck upon the anvil of liberty did not 
cease with the sparks that then set the Colonies aflame : they gener- 
ated a heat that has passed into the atmosphere of the globe, that 
has kindled in millions the hope of liberty, and that, taking on the 
form of work, has given energy and potency to movements of popular 
reform, and shall yet start the mighty enginery that shall regulate 
all social and political institutions in harmony with the good of the 
people. 

It has been proposed that Americans shall henceforth discontinue 
the reading of the Declaration of Independence on the Fourth of 
July. So far as the indictment of George III. is concerned, the sug- 
gestion has some practical value ; since it is hardly worth while to 
keep in remembrance the petty tyrannies of a very petty sort of 
tyrant, whose chief title, indeed, to a place in history, is, that his 
will was stubborn enough to cost him an empire. But the Declara- 
tion stands high above the grounds of separation ; and, while other 
nations are proclaiming by monuments and festivals the triumphs of 
military force, it were an injustice to posterity, and a shame to his- 
tory, if that nation should be silent that first proclaimed the dignity 
and worth of man. Never, never let the American people cease to 
magnify the day which declared that " all men are created equal ; 
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable 
rights ; and that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted 
among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the gov- 
erned." 



LECTURE III. 

ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION. 

THE constitution of a nation may be quite another 
thing from a national constitution. The latter may 
be written on parchment, and attested by seals, signatures, 
and oaths, and yet have within it no particle of the life of 
the nation, nor give to this a durable form. The former, 
as in England, may be unwritten and conventional, the 
growth of ages ; the life of the nation shaping to itself 
form and features appropriate to its condition. An able 
expounder of the English Constitution says, " The received 
doctrine as to the relations of the two houses of parlia- 
ment to one another, the whole theory of the position of 
the body known as the cabinet, and of its chief, the prime- 
minister, every detail, in short, of the practical working of 
government among us, is a matter belonging wholly to the 
unwritten constitution, and not at all to the written law. 
. . . We now have a whole system of political morality, a 
whole code of precepts for the guidance of public men, 
which will not be found in any page of either the statute 
or the common law, but which are in practice held hardly 
less sacred than any principle embodied in the Great 
Charter or in the Petition of Right." l It is greatly to the 
honor of the English people that they are able to govern 
themselves with so much evenness and stability, while 
dispensing with a formal constitution. 

And, on the other hand v one of the foremost patriots 
and publicists of France, Edouard Laboulaye, just after 

1 Growth of the English Constitution, by E. A. Freeman, M.A., pp. 109, 
113. 

106 



ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION. 107 

the revolution of 1848, said, 1 " In the last sixty years we 
have changed eight or ten times our government and our 
constitution ; have passed from anarchy to despotism ; 
tried two or three forms of the republic and of monarchy ; 
exhausted proscription, the scaffold, civil and foreign war ; 
and after so many attempts, and attempts paid with the 
fortune and the blood of France, we are hardly more 
advanced than at the outset. The constitution of 1848 
took for its model the constitution of 1791, which had no 
life ; and to-day we are agitating the same questions that 
in 1789 we nattered ourselves we had resolved. How is it 
that the Americans have organized liberty upon a durable 
basis, while we, who surely are not inferior to them in 
civilization, — we who have their example before our eyes, 
— have always miscarried?" 

The answer to this question I have anticipated, in part, 
in the last Lecture, by a comparison of the two peoples in 
their antecedents, their institutions, their surroundings, 
and, above all, in their ethical beliefs and motives. But, 
in this point of constitution-making, it will also be seen 
that the Americans, with a rare felicity, succeeded in in- 
corporating the constitution of the nation, which is its 
life-principle, with the national constitution, which gives 
to the national life its definitive form and expression. 
They not only achieved independence, but, in the happy 
phrase of the French critic, they " organized liberty." 
This success was due to training, to methods, and to men, 
or rather to that mysterious conjunction of men and events 
that makes the genius of an epoch akin to inspiration. 

None has divined this more clearly than Laboulaye, nor 
pictured it with more strength and grace of outline, or 
beauty of coloring. "It was amid obstacles without 
number that the founders of American liberty organized a 
government. One cannot forget the sad spectacle that 
America presented at the moment when the peace obtained 
by our efforts promised her happy days. The newly-born 
republic just missed dying in its cradle. Ten years of 
war had impoverished the country ; paper-money had led 
fatally to bankruptcy; no credit, no money, no finance; 
the weakness of the central power encouraged the incle- 

1 Etudes morales et politiques, par Edouard Laboulaye, p. 285. 



108 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

penclence of the particular States ; disunion was every- 
where ; anarchy and sedition threatened with approaching 
ruin that new government, the impotence of which England 
proclaimed with a secret joy ; and already in America it- 
self, on that soil where no king had yet been, there was 
talk of a monarchy as the only regime that could found 
and maintain the unity of a great country. 

" Then it was, when all seemed lost, when Washington 
himself began to despair of the future, — then it was that 
there were found men clear-sighted enough to see the 
remedy for so many evils, bold enough to propose it, and 
devoted enough to undertake a work apparently impossi- 
ble, — to reclaim biassed opinion, to direct minds toward one 
common end, and, spite of all prejudices and all particular 
interests, to found the Union. With no other means than 
speech and the pen, these plain citizens proclaimed the 
necessity of a constitution that should unite so many 
scattered members, caused Congress to adopt their project 
of a revisory convention, determined the country in the 
choice of its institutions, defended these institutions against 
the attacks of passion or of error, and, by dint of patience 
and courage, finally endowed America with that democratic 
organization which constitutes its strength and greatness. 

"Such was the work of Franklin, Randolph, Madison, 
Jay, and of those two men united by a constant friendship, 
and whom history will never separate, — the one, Wash- 
ington, the grandest character of modern times in his 
disinterestedness and his perseverance : the hero who under 
a stern front concealed the passion that ruled his whole 
life, — the love of country and of liberty: the other, that 
loving soul, that generous heart, that ready mind, which 
fortune found always at its level ; that soldier, orator, 
writer, legislator, financier, who was by turns the arm, the 
pen, and sometimes the thought, of Washington, — the 
brave, the chivalrous, the unfortunate Hamilton. The 
separation of powers, the independence of the President 
and the administration, guaranties against usurpation by 
the assembly, the role of the judicial power, the distribu- 
tion of the right of suffrage, communal and provincial 
libert} r , individual liberty, right of association, liberty of 
the press, — there is not one of these delicate questions, 



ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION. 109 

which, after protracted examination by the legislators of 
the United States, was not settled with admirable wisdom 
and reason. Upon the merit of their solution, time, that 
irrefragable judge, has pronounced without appeal." 1 

We have seen that the Colonies went to war with the 
mother-country without organizing a distinctive govern- 
ment, and without even contemplating a change in the 
form of government under which they had hitherto lived. 
The Continental Congress that met in Philadelphia in May, 
1775, was an extemporized assembly for counsel and con- 
ciliation. Recognizing the war that had begun at Lexing- 
ton and Concord as the common cause of the Colonies, it 
adopted the army of New England as the Continental 
army, and appointed Washington to the chief command, 
but at the same time declared, " We have not raised armies 
with designs of separating from Great Britain, and estab- 
lishing independent States. Necessity has not yet driven 
us into that desperate measure." And this was after the 
battle of Bunker Hill would seem to have made separa- 
tion both a necessity and a duty. 2 As Washington passed 
through New York on his way to his command, the legis- 
lature of that province presented him with an address, in 
which they spoke of " an accommodation with the mother- 
country " as " the fondest wish of every American soul." 
And in his reply Washington said, " Be assured that every 
exertion of my worthy colleagues and myself will be 
extended to the re-establishment of peace and harmony 
between the mother-country and these Colonies. As to 
the fatal but necessary operations of war, when we assumed 
the soldier, we did not lay aside the citizen ; and we shall 
most sincerely rejoice with you in that happy hour, when 
the establishment of American liberty on the most firm 
and solid foundations shall enable us to return to our pri- 
vate stations n the bosom of a free, peaceful, and happy 
country." 3 

Within a year, we find the Congress at Philadelphia 
forced to declare that very separation from Great Britain 
/» 

1 Etudes morales et politiques, pp. 279-281. 

2 The battle of Bunker Hill was June 17; this declaration of Congress 
on the nth of July following (1775). 

3 Pennsylvania Journal, July 5, 1775; see in Moore's Diary of the Ameri- 
can Revolution. 



HO CENTENNIAL OF AMEBIC AN INDEPENDENCE. 

which it had disavowed as " a desperate measure." Thus 
sprang into being the union of " free and independent 
States," at war with the greatest naval power of the world, 
yet having no executive head, and no government but a 
Congress of less than sixty members, originally chosen 
while the Colonies were yet subject to the mother-country, 
and for the main purpose of securing the liberties of the 
Colonies in harmony with their allegiance to the crown. 
In organizing the Continental army, and in declaring inde- 
pendence, Congress knew that it was backed by the will 
of the people : it found the state of war existing, and 
made provision for it. The war necessitated independence, 
and Congress proclaimed the fact. It must needs stand 
by its own proclamation, and go on to govern the nation 
it had ushered into being. To change front in face of an 
enemy is always a difficult and dangerous manoeuvre ; and 
Mr. Lincoln's homely adage, " Don't swap horses in the 
middle of the stream," justifies the Congress in not 
attempting to create a radically neio government at the 
very moment of defying and irritating the enemy by the 
declaration of independence. Though Congress exceeded 
its original powers, its government was not a usurpation, 
but a necessity. Quickened by the flames of war, the 
nation was struggling through a political chaos toward its 
own organic life. 

With the exception of Washington himself, who never 
underrated the gravity of the situation, the leaders of 
the Revolution seem to have fancied that the war would 
be soon over ; that a single campaign would satisfy Britain 
of the impossibility of subjugating America, and bring her 
to conditions of peace. But when Britain continued to 
send fleets and armies swollen by mercenaries, and Wash- 
ington reported, that having little ammunition, and no 
regulars, he could only act on the defensive, Congress was 
obliged to rouse itself for a conflict of indefinite duration, 
and perhaps doubtful issue, and in this emergency found 
itself without authority, without money, without supplies, 
except in the spontaneity of popular enthusiasm. Now, 
popular enthusiasm is apt to subside under disappointment, 
disaster, or delay ; and a legislative body chosen to repre- 
sent the popular will is sure to wane in authority and 



ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION. m 

influence, unless often refreshed by new elections from the 
people. So was it with the Long Parliament in England ; 
so was it with the French Assembly of Bordeaux that 
prolonged itself to weariness at Versailles ; and so too, a 
century ago, as the war of the American Revolution began 
to drag, and the original force of cohesion under pressure 
was somewhat relaxed, the people showed an increasing 
reluctance to allow a Congress that was chosen for an 
occasional emergency of counsel to transform itself into a 
permanent government of power ; and the Congress itself, 
conscious of its inability to provide the sinews of war, or 
to enforce its own acts, early took measures for a govern- 
ment suited to the new condition of the country. In these 
steps it followed, not theory, but experience, as its guide. 

Franklin, whose practical sense was almost an equiva- 
lent for prophetic sagacity, was the first to propose " Arti- 
cles of Confederation and Perpetual Union," which he did 
as early as July 21, 1775, — almost a year before the Decla- 
ration of Independence : and, a month before that act, 
Congress had appointed a committee to devise a plan of 
confederation ; the notion of some being, that the formation 
of a government ought to precede the assumption of a 
station among sovereigns. So complicated, however, was 
the question of a united central government, that it was 
not until Nov. 15, 1777, that Congress adopted such a plan, 
and not till March, 1781, that this went into operation as a 
government ratified by all the States. A few years sufficed 
to demonstrate the utter failure of this scheme ; but the 
experiment was necessary to show the futility of a confed- 
eracy of independent States upon the broad and diversified 
theatre of the American continent, and to prepare the 
way for that National Constitution which is the highest 
product of political wisdom yet wrought out for combining 
liberty with order, equality with unity, co-ordinate self- 
government with supreme central sovereignty. The 
Trainers of the Confederacy failed through following prece- 
dents not suited to their condition, and by fearing to 
clothe free institutions with the power needful for their 
security, lest this should be turned to their destruction : 
the framers of the Constitution succeeded by providing in 
government itself a method and a motive for preserving 



112 CENTEKXIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

free institutions from that disintegration to which they 
tend alike through their inertia in times of security, and 
their centrifugal force in times of danger. The study of 
the failure will enable us the better to appreciate the 
success. 

The Congress of 1T76 had before them these precedents 
in American history to guide them in framing a govern- 
ment : first, the practice of local self-government, under 
various forms, in all the Colonies; and, secondly, the 
occasional union of the Colonies, upon equal terms, for 
counsel or action for preserving their several liberties, or 
guarding against some impending danger. They had 
been called into existence by local assemblies, regularly 
or irregularly convened, which represented the right 
and interest of the people in governing themselves ; and 
their union — first as a Congress of all the Colonies, and 
now of the independent States — was for the very purpose 
of maintaining the liberties of the people under their forms 
of local independence. Hence it was natural, that, in 
framing a government to perpetuate union, they should 
make it their first care to secure the independence of the 
States, and keep intact their sovereignty. They took up 
arms for the independence of the Colonies of a control 
outside of themselves. The usurpations of king and par- 
liament upon their prerogative of local government had 
made them jealous of any central head, executive or legis- 
lative ; and the States would not consent that Congress 
should directly enroll an army, but retained the control of 
their several quotas, lest, in the pride of victory, some 
ambitious general might use the army to overawe the 
liberties of the people. 1 

Outside of their colonial experience, the Congress of 
1T7G had no recent examples to guide them but the 
republics of Switzerland and of the Netherlands, and 
these both were confederacies ; and, in point of fact, the 
confederation that Congress finally commended to the 

i Washington frequently complained of this dependence of the army 
upon so many local, scattered, and sometimes jealous and discordant 
heads, as impairing its unity and efficiency, preventing the formation of 
veterau and disciplined troops, and often crippling his resource; on the 
eye of important movements. There can he no doubt that it greatly pro- 
longed the war of independence, and, at time i, made its issue dubious. 



ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION. H3 

States was modelled as nearly as possible upon the union 
of Utrecht of 1579. The five provinces of the Nether- 
lands that entered into the compact of Utrecht agreed 
that " each province should retain its particular privileges, 
liberties, laudable and traditional customs, and other 
laws ; that the provinces should defend each other against 
all foreign or domestic potentates, provinces, or cities, 
provided such defence were controlled by the generality 
of the union ; that no truce or peace was to be concluded, 
no war commenced, no import established, affecting the 
generality, but by unanimous advice and consent of the 
provinces ; and none of the united provinces, or of their 
cities or corporations, were to make treaties with other 
potentates or states without consent of their confeder- 
ates." 1 

Each of these features is found in the " Articles of 
Confederation and Perpetual Union " under which the 
United States of America were organized in 1781. The 
Confederacy was a " league of friendship " between inde- 
pendent States, " for their common defence, the security 
of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare." 
Its fundamental article declared, " Each State retains its 
sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, 
jurisdiction, and right which is not by this Confederation 
expressly delegated to the United States in Congress 
assembled." This Congress consisted of a single house : 
its members were appointed annually by authority of the 
legislatures of the States ; and each State could recall its 
delegates during the year, and send others in their stead. 
Each State maintained its delegates at its own cost. The 
voting in Congress was by States : each State had but one 
vote. No act could be passed without the consent of a 
majority of the States ; and, in many cases, the consent of 
nine of the thirteen States was required. Though Con- 
gress had the right and power of determining on peace 
and war, of sending and receiving ambassadors, and enter- 
ing into treaties and alliances, yet, in case of invasion or 
of imminent clanger, a single State could go to war, and 
equip an army and navy of its own : and also, with the 
sanction of Congress, two or more States could enter into 

i Motley : Dutch Republic, vol. iii. 411, 412. 



114 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

a special treaty or confederation between themselves, and 
single States could make a commercial or other alliance 
with foreign powers. The charges of war, and other 
expenses incurred by Congress for the common defence 
and general welfare, were assessed upon the several States 
in proportion to the value of all land granted or surveyed 
within each State ; but the quota of a State could be 
raised only by the authority and direction of its own legis- 
lature. The Confederacy had no judiciary to enforce its 
acts, and no executive head to represent and administer 
its authority : from first to last, it was a compact between 
States whose independent sovereignty was jealously guard- 
ed at every point. Such a compact must fall to pieces as 
soon as the necessity was over that called it into being, 
and, indeed, because of that very necessity. 

It is true that in Switzerland we have an example of a 
confederacy of independent cantons without a personal 
head ; the executive and administrative authority being 
vested in a federal council of seven. But this is possible, 
because, first, the area of Switzerland, 1 being onl} T one two 
hundred and twenty-fifth part of the area of the United 
States, is so small as to admit of direct democratic govern- 
ment, as in the cantonal assemblies of Appenzell, Ausscr, 
Rhoden, Uri, and Unterwalden, and in subdivisions of 
other cantons ; and, next, because the constant pressure 
of external danger gives to the Swiss Bund an internal 
force of cohesion greater than the divisive tendencies of 
mountains and lakes, of language and religion. Should 
the Swiss push their local independence to the extreme 
of separatism, they would fall a prey to their powerful 
neighbors. 2 Their union may lack the massive strength 
and the sunny warmth of their Alps ; but there is also a 
coherence in the glacier as it lies locked in the arms of 
the mountains. 

How different the geographical and political position of 

i The superficial area of Switzerland is 752 geographical square miles; 
that of the Unite;l States, 109,589. 

2 This came near being the case thirty years ago, when the Sonderbund, 
or separate league of the'Catholic cantons, furnished to France ami Aus- 
tria a pretext for meddling in the internal affairs of Switzerland. Noth- 
ing but the patriotic uprising of the people at the call of the Diet, like 
the enthusiastic rally for the'Union in the Unite;l States, saved Switzerland 
from being virtually appropriated and governed by the greater powers. 



ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION. H5 

the United States under the Confederation of 1781 ! The 
thirteen Colonies, when they entered upon the war with 
Great Britain, occupied, in all, an area of 420,892 square 
miles, stretching along a sea-coast of 1,300 miles. By the 
peace of 1783, the title of the United States was secured 
to all the territory claimed by Great Britain east of the 
Mississippi, south of Canada, north of Florida and of 
the thirty-first parallel, — a total area of 827,844 square 
miles ; being fifty-four times greater than the whole area 
of the Swiss Confederation. The independence of the 
United States having been acknowledged by Great Britain 
and the leading powers of Continental Europe, the Ameri- 
can Confederacy, separated from them all by an ocean 
not yet traversed by steam, had few dangers or fears from 
without. Hence, as I have hinted, the very emergency 
that compelled the States to co-operation for war would 
intensify their individuality on the return of peace. That 
emergency was the preservation of local self-government ; 
and the doctrine of the Declaration of Independence, 
touching the right of the people to have a government 
satisfactory to themselves, if pressed to an extreme, might 
encourage a State in maintaining its own sovereignty 
apart, and contending for its own interests against the 
claims of the Confederacy. 

This would indeed have been a perversion of the Decla- 
ration, as well in letter as in spirit. That was " a decla- 
ration by the representatives of the United States of 
America : " it spoke " in the name and by the authority 
of the good people of the Colonies," in their totality as one 
political commonwealth, and declared " that these United 
Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independ- 
ent States." The Colonies, as united through their Con- 
gress, constituted a new body politic, which declared 
itself a separate and independent power among the na- 
tions. But an independence which was based upon union 
could not logically imply that any State could declare 
itself independent of the rest. Nevertheless, there was a 
lurking danger in this direction. Just as to usurpation 
from without was opposed the union of " free and inde- 
pendent States," so to the danger of a central control 
from within would be opposed the centrifugal force of 



116 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

local independence. And so indeed it was. Congress 
had assessed the several States in due proportion for the 
debt of the war of independence ; but some of the States 
took no measures for providing their quota, and one posi- 
tively refused to do any thing toward the liquidation of 
that sacred charge. 1 Peace was proclaimed Sept. 8, 1783. 
On the 25th .February, 1787, Mr. Madison wrote to Ed- 
mund Randolph, " No money comes into the Federal treas- 
ury ; no respect is paid to the Federal authority ; and 
people of reflection unanimously agree that the existing 
Confederacy is tottering to its foundation. Many indi- 
viduals of weight, particularly in the Eastern District, are 
suspected of leaning toward monarchy. Other individuals 
predict a partition of the States into two or more confed- 
eracies." 2 Pennsylvania and New Jersey on the one hand. 
Virginia and Maryland on the other, had entered into 
special compacts without the consent of Congress : and the 
legislature of Virginia not only refused to apply for the 
sanction of Congress, but actually voted against the com- 
munication of the compact to Congress. 8 Georgia and Mas- 
sachusetts had raised troops without consent of Congress : 
Connecticut had taxed imports from Massachusetts ; some 
of the seaboard States had taxed adjoining States that 
must trade through them ; some, by their navigation laws, 
" treated the citizens of other States as "aliens.'* 4 Thus the 
principle of local self-government was pushing itself to 
the destruction of co-operation even for the public order 
and safety ; the centrifugal force of separatism was rend- 
ing the Confederacy asunder. 

With great clearness Mr. Madison pointed out that 
"the radical infirmity of the Articles of Confederation 
was the dependence of Congress on the voluntary and 
simultaneous compliance with its requisitions by so many 
independent communities, each consulting more or less its 
particular interests and convenience, and distrusting the 
compliance of the others.'' 5 And Mr. Wilson of Pennsyl- 

1 New Jersey in 1786<: see Journals of Congress, vol. iv. p. 622. Ac- 
cording to Mr. Madison. Connecticut likewise refused to pass a law for 
complying with the requisitions of Congress (Rives's Life of Madison, ii. 
p. 108). 

2 Papers of James Madison (ed. 1820), vol. ii. 620. 3 Ibid., p. 712. 
* Ibid., ii. 711, 712. * Ibid., ii. 092. 



ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION". H7 

vania 1 thus sharply satirized the change that had come 
over public sentiment since the pressure of a common dan- 
ger was withdrawn : " Among the first sentiments ex- 
pressed in the first Congress, one was, that Virginia is no 
more, that Massachusetts is no more, that Pennsylvania 
is no more : we are now one nation of brethren ; we 
must bury all local interests and distinctions. This lan- 
guage continued for some time. The tables at length 
began to turn. No sooner were the State governments 
formed than their jealousy and ambition began to display 
themselves : each endeavored to cut a slice from the com- 
mon loaf to add to its own morsel, till at length the Con- 
federation became frittered down to the impotent condi- 
tion in which it now stands." 

The perils of the Confederacy brought Washington 
from his retirement to save by his counsels the liberty he 
had won by his sword. " No morn," said he, " ever 
dawned more favorably than ours did, and no day was 
ever more clouded than the present. . . . We are fast 
verging to anarchy and confusion. Thirteen sovereignties 
pulling against each other, and all tugging at the Federal 
head, will soon bring ruin on the whole." 2 " What a 
triumph for our enemies to verify their predictions ! 
What a triumph for the advocates of despotism to find 
that we are incapable of governing ourselves, and that 
systems founded on the basis of equal liberty are merely 
ideal and fallacious ! " 3 In a word, the centrifugal ten- 
dency of local self-government had well-nigh separated the 
Confederacy into its primitive atoms. 

This process of disintegration was favored by that 
inertia which seems to paralyze free institutions in times 
of outward security. In hereditary forms of government, 
monarchical or aristocratic, there is always a class to 
whom government is an occupation, and the exercise or 
conservation of power is the business of life. Like the 
royal house of Prussia, they are trained to government as 
a profession ; like the House of Lords in England, they 
must care for government as a necessity of their own 
existence. They cannot let government alone, lest it slip 

1 Papers of Madison, ii. 825. 

2 Letter to Madison, Nov. 5, 1786 : see in Sparks and in Madison. 
8 Letter to Jay, 1st August, 1786. 



118 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

altogether from their hands. But Freedom asks for noth- 
ing so much as to be let alone. She wishes neither to 
govern nor to be governed ; and though fierce as a lioness 
for her cubs when her retreat is threatened, yet she loves 
to rest unconscious of danger, and, unless pressed for life, 
will molest none who do not molest her. But as with the 
human constitution, so with the constitution of civil 
society, inertia is fatal to life. Unless something be done 
to excite its powers to activity, these will presently sink 
into decay, or succumb to the first disorder. Hence, for 
the preservation of free institutions, there must be some 
device for investing government with dignity, responsibil- 
ity, and authority, so that it shall be an object to wise and 
good men to devote their lives to public affairs, to make 
statemanship their science, and politics their profession. 
True, this would also make government a prize for the 
ambitious and designing; but, under any system, we must 
take the risks of human nature as it is, and compound 
with it on the best terms possible. Left to their own 
inertia, free institutions will die of inanition, or fall a prey 
to faction, conspirac}^, or invasion. But a strong govern- 
ment set to watch over liberty will provoke the vigilance 
that must be the safeguard against its own abuse. Hap- 
pily for the life of the American Republic, there were at 
that day men who had the perspicacity to see this, and the 
courage to avow it ; chief among them Alexander Hamil- 
ton and George Washington. Hamilton viewed the crisis 
from the lower plane of human passions and political 
experiences ; Washington, with the comprehensive wis- 
dom and supreme moral judgment that marked the slow 
but certain processes of his mind. Hamilton argued that 
" the great and essential principles for the support of gov- 
ernment are, (1) An active and constant interest in 
supporting it; (2) The love of power; (3) An habitual 
attachment of the people, its sovereignty being immedi- 
ately before their eyes, its protection immediately enjoyed 
by them; (4) Force, by which may be understood a 
coercion of laws, or coercion of arms ; (5) Influence, or 
a dispensation of those regular honors and emoluments 
which produce an attachment to the government." But, 
by the confederate system, " all the passions of avarice, 



ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION. H9 

ambition, interest, which govern most individuals and 
all public bodies, fall into the current of the States, and 
do not How into the stream of the General Government. 
The former, therefore, will generally be an overmatch for 
the General Government, and render any confederacy in 
its very nature precarious." 1 Hence Hamilton contended 
for a national government, in distinction from " an associa- 
tion of independent communities into a federal govern- 
ment." After a fair trial of confederation, Washington 
wrote, " I confess that my opinion of public virtue is so 
far changed, that I have my doubts whether any system, 
without the means of coercion in the sovereign, will 
enforce due obedience to the ordinances of a general 
government, without which every thing else fails." And 
again : " We have probably had too good an opinion of 
human nature in forming our confederation. Experience 
has taught us that men will not adopt and carry into exe- 
cution measures the best calculated for their own good, 
without the intervention of a coercive power. I do not 
conceive Ave can long exist as a nation, without having 
lodged somewhere a power which will pervade the whole 
Union in as energetic a manner as the authority of the 
State governments extends over the several States." 2 
Yet Washington was thoroughly opposed to the idea of a 
monarchy as the solution of the problem, and had spurned 
with indignation the suggestion of the army that he should 
make himself king or dictator. 

It was for Madison to point out how that control of the 
whole, that Washington and Hamilton insisted on, could 
be secured with safety to the parts. " Congress," he said, 
" have kept the vessel from sinking : but it has been by 
standing constantly at the pump, not by stopping the leaks 
which have endangered her." 3 He pointed out that " the 
great desideratum in government is such a modification of 
the sovereignty as will render it sufficiently neutral between 
the different interests and factions to control one part of the 
society from invading the rights of another, and, at the 
same time, sufficiently controlled itself from setting up an 

1 For an abstract of Hamilton's great speech in the Federal Convention, 
see Madison Papers, ii. 878-893. 

2 Letter to Jay, Aug. 1, 1786. 

3 Letter to Jefferson, Oct. 3, 1785; Rives, ii. 41. 



120 CENTEXXIAL OF AMERICAN" LXDEPEXDEXCE. 

interest adverse to that of the whole society." l How com- 
pletely the Confederacy had failed of this is shown by an 
analysis of the system put forth by a statesman of that 
period : " By this political compact, the United States in 
Congress have exclusive power for the following purposes, 
without being able to execute one of them : — 

"1. They may make and conclude treaties, but can only 
recommend the 'observance of them. 

" 2. They may appoint ambassadors, but cannot defray 
even the expenses of their tables. 

" 3. They may borrow money in their own name, on the 
faith of the Union, but cannot pay a dollar. 

" 4. They may coin money ; but they cannot purchase 
an ounce of bullion . 

" 5. They may make war, and determine what number 
of troops are necessary, but cannot raise a single soldier. 

"G. In short, they may declare every thing, but do noih- 
ing." 

From the fatal collapse of free government that the 
wisest statesmen of the Confederacy feared, there were 
but two ways of escape, — the one by the division of the 
Confederacy into smaller republics, that should be related 
to each other, as to foreign powers, by treaties of commerce 
and alliance ; the other by the erection of a strong central 
national government. The first of these was already talked 
of, especially by some extreme advocates of practical de- 
mocracy and state sovereignty in Massachusetts. A letter 
of Mr. Monroe to Patrick Henry, dated New York, 12th 
August, 1786, contains this apparently authentic state- 
ment : 4i Committees arc held in this town, of Eastern men, 
and others of this State, upon the subject of a dismem- 
berment of the States east of the Hudson from the Union, 
and the erection of them into a separate government. To 
what length they have gone I know not, but have assur- 
ances as to the truth of the above position, with this addi- 
tion to it, that the measure is talked of in Massachusetts 
familiarly, and is supposed to have originated there. The 
plan of the government in all its modifications has even 
been contemplated by them." 2 

1 Paper on the Vices of the Political System of the United States, 
April, 1787; Rives ii. 21<i. 

2 Rives' s Life of Madison, ii. 122. 



ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION. }21 

On the other hand, Washington, in his circular letter to 
the governors of the several States just before he retired 
from the army, had strongly urged that the States should 
yield to the General Government the powers necessary to 
provide against anarchy and confusion. " It is indispensa- 
ble," he said, " to the happiness of the individual States, 
that there should be lodged somewhere a supreme power 
to regulate and govern the general concerns of the confed- 
erated republic. . . .Whatever measures have a tendency 
to dissolve the Union, or contribute to violate or lessen its 
sovereign authority, ought to be considered hostile to the 
liberty and independence of America, and the authors of 
them treated accordingly." * 

Happily for the preservation of that liberty and inde- 
pendence, the outbreak of rebellion put an end to the 
scheme of independent State sovereignties, even in Massa- 
chusetts, where, perhaps, the feeling against a strong 
national government was most jealous and active. The 
armed resistance of Shays and his followers, in 178G, to 
the collection of taxes, and the enforcement of private 
claims, found much sympathy among the people ; and, in 
some cases, town-officers went so far as to order their mili- 
tia to co-operate with the rebels. 2 The civil courts were 
declared to be " engines of destruction," and were broken 
up by an armed mob ; the State Senate was denounced as 
a " needless and aristocratic branch of the government ; " 3 
the tax-gatherers were forcibly resisted ; the Federal arsenal 
at Springfield was attacked by a force of two thousand 
men : in a word, there was an attempt to resolve society 
into its original elements, and to clothe the local democra- 
cy with absolute and final sovereignty. 4 The government 
of Massachusetts succeeded in suppressing the rebellion 
by its own arm, but not until it had invoked the aid of 
the Federal Congress, and Congress had raised a body of 
troops for that purpose. 5 A skirmish at Springfield, and 
the capture of the main body of the rebels at Petersham, 
brought the affair to an end, with no great loss of life ; 

1 Letter of 8th Jime, 1784: Sparks's Collection. 

2 Wells's Life of Samuel Adams, iii. 229. s ibid., 223. 

4 See Washington to Madison of Nov. 5, 1786, in Sparks, vol. ix., and 
Hives' s Madison, ii. 175. 

5 Secret Journals of Congress, i. 267-270. 



122 CENTENNIAL OF AMEBIC AN INDEPENDENCE. 

but the horror of anarchy and civil war produced a strong 
re-action from the scheme of confederated democracies, 
and strengthened the movement for a vigorous national 
government. Washington wrote to Madison, " How mel- 
ancholy is the reflection, that, in so short a time, we should 
have made such large strides towards fulfilling the predic- 
tions of our transatlantic foes ! — ' Leave them to them- 
selves, and their government will soon dissolve.' Will 
not the wise and good strive hard to avert this evil ? or 
will their supineness suffer ignorance, and the arts of self- 
interested, designing, disaffected, and desperate characters, 
to involve this great country in wretchedness and contempt ? 
What stronger evidence can be given of the want of ener- 
gy in our government than these disorders? If there is 
not power in it to check them, what security has a man 
for life, liberty, or property? " l 

That was in November, 1786. The twenty-fifth day of 
May, 1787, witnessed the dawn of hope. On that day a 
convention of the States for revising the Federal Govern- 
ment was organized' 2 in Philadelphia, with Washington 
as its president. The convention sat till the 17th Septem- 
ber, when it signed, and sent forth for the approval, of the 
nation, that Constitution under which the people of the 
United States have lived to this day. At the opening of 
the convention, when a diversity of views had provoked 
some warmth of feeling, Dr. Franklin said, " We are sent 
here to consult, not to contend, with each other ; and decla- 
rations of a fixed opinion, and of determined resolution 
never to change it, neither enlighten nor convince us." 
At the close, when the deputies had signed the new Con- 
stitution, Franklin pointed to the president's chair, at the 
back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, and 
said that " painters had found it difficult to distinguish in 
their art a rising from a setting sun. Often and often 
in the course of the session, and the vicissitudes of my 
hopes and fears as to its issue, I have looked at that behind 
the president, without being able to tell whether it was 
rising or setting ; but now at length I have the happiness 

1 Nor. 5, 178G: see in Sparks, ix. 207. 

2 The convention met on Monday, May 14, but, for lack of a quorum, 
did not organize till the 25th. 



ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION. 123 

to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun." Let 
us hope the sun that rose that clay shall never set ! 

Never man did better service for his country than 
James Madison in keeping a record of the sayings and 
doings of that remarkable convention, that embraced such 
men as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Alexan- 
der Hamilton, Roger Sherman, the two Pinckneys, Robert 
Morris, Governeur Morris, Rufus King, and James Madison 
himself. The convention sat with closed doors, and no 
report of its debates was allowed to be published; but 
Madison, who was a ready penman, and perfectly conver- 
sant with the topics handled in the convention, took 
copious notes of the speeches, and, in the more important 
cases, submitted these to the revision of the speakers. On 
the death of Mr. Madison, these invaluable reports were 
purchased for the department of state ; and in 1840 they 
were published under authority of Congress, as a legacy to 
the nation. The testimony of Madison to his colleagues 
in the convention is now the recognized voice of history : 
" Whatever may be the judgment pronounced on the com- 
petency of the architects of the Constitution, or whatever 
may be the destiny of the edifice prepared by them, I feel 
it a duty to express my profound and solemn conviction, 
derived from my intimate opportunity of observing and 
appreciating the views of the convention collectively and 
individually, that there never was an assembly of men 
charged with a great and arduous trust, who were more 
pure in their motives, or more exclusively or anxiously 
devoted to the object committed to them, than were the 
members of the Federal Convention of 1787 to the object 
of devising and proposing a constitutional system which 
should best supply the defects of that which it was to 
replace, and best secure the permanent liberty and happi- 
ness of their country." l 

From Friday the 25th of May, when it was duly organ- 
ized, till Monday the 17th of September, when the depu- 
ties of twelve States signed the completed Constitution, 
through all the summer heats, the convention sat continu- 
ously, with no interruption except for the Sunday rest, 
and an occasional clay for committees to finish their work. 

i Introduction to Debates in the Convention: Madison Papers, ii. 718. 



124 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

No committee was allowed to sit when the convention was 
in session, nor was any member suffered to be absent 
from his place so as to interrupt the representation of his 
State. The convention felt that it had to do with ques- 
tions of equal and momentous concern to each and every 
State, and therefore all the States must be present in their 
deputies during the whole discussion. Not even the work 
of committees should be an excuse for absence. Those men 
knew their duty, and did it. 

One rule of the convention affords a glimpse at the man- 
ners of the times, and shows how far the fathers were from 
the levelling practice of democracy : it reads, " When the 
house shall adjourn, every member shall stand in his place 
until the president pass him," — a practice that existed in 
the chapel of Yale College in my student days. Washing- 
ton himself was a master of etiquette, and stood upon it, 
not only in his famous rejection of Lord Howe's letter 
to " George Washington, Esq.," but in official intercourse 
with his own countrymen. Senator Hillhouse used to 
give a picture of the change of manners from Washington 
to Jefferson by showing two dinner invitations: the first, 
" The President of the United States requests the com- 
pany of the senator of Connecticut ; " the second, " Mr. 
Jefferson requests the company of Mr. Hillhouse." The 
senator could never reconcile himself to that change of 
dispensation. 

A radical German of Berlin wondered that I halted, and 
lifted my hat to the late queen-dowager as she drove by 
on the Linden. I answered, " A republican should be 
first among gentlemen." It may suit " Young Ameri- 
ca " to drop the handles of names, and push and elbow 
where the fathers used to stand and wait ; but from my 
deepest soul do I respect an assembly in which Benjamin 
Franklin, Oliver Ellsworth, Roger Sherman, Alexander 
Hamilton, James Madison, stood silent with uncovered 
heads till George Washington passed by. 

Precious as was the work of the convention " for the 
liberty and happiness of the country," it can be best appre- 
ciated by contrast with the measures that they canvassed 
and rejected. In those four months of daily debate, eveiy 
theory of government was ventilated, every form of con- 



ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION. 125 

stitution tested in the light of history, philosophy, and 
experience. As many an inventor might save himself 
years of toil and trouble by visiting the Patent Office, and 
seeing how often his machine has come to grief, so many 
a " rising statesman " might spare himself and the country 
his patent schemes of government if he should study the 
debates in the Federal Convention of 1787. Only I sup- 
pose that while the world stands, both in mechanics and 
in government, there will be ever-recurring devices for 
perpetual motion. Every presidential election starts up 
some crotchet for a better way of getting presidents, or a 
way of getting better presidents. Horace Greeley, for 
instance, was prolific of such crotchets ; the latest being to 
run himself as the candidate of two parties that disliked 
him almost as much as they distrusted one another. It 
is an infelicity of the " selfmade " man that he imagines 
every thing, to be as . crude as the material of which he 
fashioned himself, and, having " made himself," feels equal 
to making or remaking every thing else, not excepting 
the universe and its Maker. 

There are schemes for extending the term of the presi- 
dency, for limiting the office to a single term, for elect- 
ing the President directly by the people, &c. All these 
projects, and others also, were fully discussed, and finally 
set aside, by the wisdom and weight of the convention. 
At one time, the formal draught of the Constitution pro- 
vided that the President " shall be elected by ballot by 
the legislature. Pie shall hold his office during the term 
of seven years, but shall not be elected a second time." 
Amendments were proposed, on the one hand, to the ex- 
treme of a direct popular choice, like Louis Napoleon's 
plebiscite; on the other, to the extreme of an appoint- 
ment, by the national legislature, " during good behavior," 
— a quality that we should be glad to predicate of the 
legislature itself. After days of discussion, and much elab- 
oration in committees, the convention settled upon the 
plan, which, with some slight amendments to prevent 
confusion and rivalry between the offices of President and 
Vice-President, has worked so long and so well, — a Presi- 
dent chosen by popular electors for the term of four years, 
the question of re-election being left to the circum- 



126 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

stances of the hour and the good sense of the people. 
Mr. Lincoln said to me, after his nomination for a second 
term, " I do not pretend to be without ambition ; yet I have 
no mean ambition for a re-election: but having carried 
this burden of war for four years, and been often com- 
pelled to act alone, I should like to feel that my country- 
men approve my course." 

I replied, "Mr. President, you may count upon an 
indorsement now in quarters where you had least expected 
it. I have just returned from the service of the Christian 
and Sanitary Commissions in Gen. Sherman's army in 
Tennessee and Georgia. One day I said to a knot of 
soldiers who were off duty, ' Boys, what are you fighting 
for ? ' Their answers were a touching and beautiful testi- 
mony to their patriotism, and loyalty to the Union. One 
of them was an Irishman ; and his answer is worth repeat- 
ing in detail. ' What I'm fighting for, shure ? It wasn't 
meeself that made Misther Lincoln President. De'el the 
bit of it ! I'm a Dimmycrat, shure, an' I voted for Doug- 
las. But, you see, Misther Lincoln was elected, an' so was 
the President by the laws. With that they sez down 
here in the South, "Be jabers! he sha'n't be the President: 
we'll break up the Union first." Sez I, " Is it that yer 
afther, me boys ! It's meeself 11 be tayching ye better 
manners." So I shouldered mee musket ; an', by jabers ! I'll 
stay here till every man of them sez Misther Lincoln's 
the President.' 

" ; Well, Pat,' I said, ' you'll soon have an opportunity 
of voting for President again. I shall go to Washington 
soon, and see the President: what shall I say to him? ' 

" ; Would you be afther giving him mee compliments, 
an' say that it wasn't I that made him President, but it's 
meeselfll do it this time ; for it's jest mee opinion that the 
jontlemon that begon this job is the one to go through with 
it?'" 1 

1 I notice it is made a merit in Gov. Hayes's letter of acceptance that 
be pledges himself not to be a candidate for a second term: but I confess 
this seems to detract from the average manly dignity of the letter. It is 
like saying, "I fear to trust myself, and fear you would not trust me, to 
the temptations of a second candidacy." But, if Mr. Hayes is going to re- 
form and reconstruct the civil service, he will have more than a four-years' 
job on his hands, and may be just the gentleman to go through with it. 
He should rather have said, "1 have not sought this nomination; but I 



ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION. 127 

Mr. Lincoln laughed heartily at the story; then his 
great tender eyes filled with emotion as he said, " I am 
glad I have such friends among the plain people, and glad 
the country can trust in such friends and defenders." 
Yes, he was " the gentleman to go through with the job " 
he had begun. His countrymen testified that they had 
as much need of him as he of them ; yet the greatness of 
the Constitution was shown in that it could do without him, 
and meet his death without a shock. 

The Constitution of the national legislature was dis- 
cussed by the convention in all its aspects ; many being 
in favor of a single house, such as the Continental Con- 
gress and the Congress of the Confederacy: but the 
result was that admirable composition of two houses, 
which has made the United States a model for all other 
peoples attempting republican institutions. Years after, 
Jefferson, while taking tea with Washington, contended 
for the advantages of a single house. "Mr. Jefferson," 
said Washington, " you have just furnished the best argu- 
ment for two houses : your tea being too hot, you poured 
it from the cup into the saucer." l It has been attempted 
to prove that Washington was linked to our common 
humanity by having once got angry, and so angry as to 
utter an oath. That link is not quite made out ; but here 
Ave have a surer link with our human nature, in that 
Washington did once utter a joke, — a bit of philosophical 
wit worthy of Franklin. 

accept it at the call of my countrymen. If elected, T shall reward no par- 
tisan, and shall dismiss no faithful and competent officer for political 
opinions. My administration shall be directed to the restoration of specie 
payments, the reduction of the tariff, the reform of the civil service, the 
protection of liberty, the establishing of confidence and peace. Should 
the people ask me to serve them again, I must reserve till then the right of 
deciding vdiether I can give any more of my time and strength to the pub- 
lic service." Once fix the civil service so that it cannot be a political 
machine, and the bugbear of terms vanishes. "What the people need in 
candidates is men who cannot be ennobled by office ; but having such 
men in Mr. Adams, Mr. Evarts, and a hundred more, the people do not yet 
feel the want of them, ,and so amuse themselves with pledges and other 
conceits about terms of office (October, 187G). 

1 I had this anecdote from the late Judge Daggett of New Haven. 

The Constitution of the German Empire, it is true, provides for only 
one house of parliament. But the Bundesrath, which is composed of 
councillors who represent directly the several governments of the empire, 
is a check upon the parliament ; and the ministry do not, as in England, 
feel called upon to resign in case of an adverse vote of the house. As yet, 
this mixed system is an experiment. 



128 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

Without going further into detail, let me fix your atten- 
tion upon two points in which the wisdom of the framers 
of the Constitution was conspicuous in that which they 
rejected. First, at a time when slavery, or serfdom, was 
still a common usage of Christian nations, they rejected 
every proposal to introduce the term " slave " or " slave- 
ry " into the -Constitution; and it is a curious anomaly 
that these words were first brought into the Constitution 
through amendments proposed by abolitionists after slavery 
had ceased to exist. The Thirteenth Amendment declares 
that " neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as 
a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been 
duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or 
any place subject to their jurisdiction;" the Fourteenth 
Amendment provides that " neither the United States nor 
any State shall assume or pay any claim for the loss or 
emancipation of any slave;" and the Fifteenth Amend- 
ment declares that " the right of citizens of the United 
States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the 
United States on account of race, color, or previous condi- 
tion of servitude." Here we have " slave," "slavery," 
" servitude," in the Constitution, words that never before 
were there, but were purposely kept out of the instrument 
by the men that framed it. Pending the conflict on slave- 
ry, the extreme wing of the abolitionists denounced the 
Constitution as " an agreement with hell," and called for 
a dissolution of the compact and of the Union under it ; 
that is, they would have had the North do, for getting rid 
of slavery, the very thing that it finally fought the South 
for attempting to do to preserve slavery. On the other hand, 
the extreme wing of the conservatives held that " the 
compromises of the Constitution" recognized slavery, 
guaranteed it against invasion, and by consequence warrant- 
ed all measures necessary to the protection and preserva- 
tion of the system. Neither party read the Constitution in 
the spirit or the letter of its framers. Entering into public 
affairs just when this controversy was at the hottest, in 
starting " The Independent " I took ground with my col- 
leagues that the Constitution was throughout an instru- 
ment of liberty ; that its framers designed it to protect and 
perpetuate liberty alone, but its meaning had been over- 



ADOPTION OP THE CONSTITUTION. 129 

laid by traditions and interpretations that had become 
more current and potent than the organic law. 1 That 
this was the true view was proved by the fact, that after 
slavery was abolished, though amendments were added to 
the Constitution to fortify it against the re-establishment 
of the system, not one word required to be expunged, nor 
has been expunged, from the Constitution as it had stood 
from the beginning. 

This view is sustained, also, by the debates and doings 
of the Federal Convention. The convention found itself 
in face of slavery as a domestic institution in most of the 
States, and of the slave-trade participated in by some 
States, though prohibited by the majority. 2 Again and 
again it was declared by the delegates of North Carolina, 
South Carolina, and Georgia, that those States would 
never assent to a constitution that should prohibit either 
slavery or the slave-trade. Here, then, was a dilemma, the 
gravity of which it is not easy for us at this day to esti- 
mate ; or, I may rather say, would be hard to over- 
estimate. Together the Colonies had fought the war of 
the Revolution, and won their independence as United 
States. Together these States had framed the existing 
Confederation ; and, now that the Confederation was dis- 
solving for very weakness, they had come together to 
devise some method of preserving the liberty and union 
of the country under an appeal that declared "the situa- 
tion of the United States so delicate and critical as to call 
for an exertion of the united virtue and wisdom of all the 
members of the Confederacy." 3 They were met in the 
capacity of equal and sovereign States : they saw clearly 

1 This was the view of that stanch abolitionist and consistent patriot, 
Dr. Joshua Leavitt, with whom I had the honor to he associated for so 
many years in the conduct of the Independent. His philosophic mind saw 
how to use the Church and the Constitution as instruments for the over- 
throw of slavery. He gave oi his wisdom to pastors and to legislators, 
and was far more deserving of an honorary testimonial as the leader or 
emancipation than they who in fact received it. 

2 Massachusetts and Pennsylvania adopted measures of emancipation 
in 1780, Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1784. New Hampshire followed 
in 179.!, New York in 1799, and New Jersey in 1804. But the household 
slavery in the Northern States had little in common with the plantation 
slavery of the South. The former treated the slave as a person, the lat- 
ter as property. At the period of the Constitution, North Carolina, South 
Carolina, and Georgia were the only States that had not already prohib- 
ited the importation of slaves from foreign countries. 

3 Report of Col. Hamilton: Madison Papers, ii. 702. 



130 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

that their strength and perpetuity as a Union would, re- 
quire the surrendry by each State of some portion of the 
sovereignty it so clearly prized, and this surrendry must 
be acquiesced in by the people of each State in accept- 
ing the proposed Constitution. Had a bare majority of 
States in that convention insisted upon terms of union 
that must have excluded one-fourth of the whole, this 
would, indeed, have dealt a final blow to the Confederacy 
as it then was, but have also defeated the possibility of a 
stable and united nation. If South Carolina, North Caro- 
lina, and Georgia had been excluded from the just nascent 
Union because of slavery, it was highly probable that 
Virginia and Maryland would have made common cause 
with them, though these two States had already prohib- 
ited the slave-trade, and many leading statesmen of Vir- 
ginia favored the abolition of slavery. In that event 
there would have been two rival confederacies, both weak, 
and both likely to be distracted with the strife of demo- 
cratic and monarchic tendencies. Moreover, the three 
most southerly States had not yet ceded their surplus 
lands to the public domain; and Virginia might have 
reclaimed her territory ceded in 1784, if the partnership 
of the States had been dissolved. These two rival confed- 
eracies of States, already exhausted by war, and utterly 
bankrupt in finances, would have sought to outbid one 
another in alliances with European powers; and can any 
man believe, that, after twenty years, there would have 
existed on the soil of North America a union of free and 
independent States ? Our fathers saw this peril to their 
own work and the hopes of humanity ; and with a wisdom 
true to the higher instinct of universal freedom, dwarfing 
an incongruity of the actual with the ideal, they made 
sure of the possible, and so secured a continent to Lib- 
erty and Man. And this they did by making the Consti- 
tution an instrument of liberty, and refusing to tarnish it 
with the name of slavery. 

The convention did not do evil that good might come ; 
hardly did they make a choice of evils : their aim was 
simply and honestly good. Had they driven off the 
Southern States, so far from helping freedom and humani- 
ty through the curtailment of slavery, they would have 



ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION. 131 

provoked the zeal of a rival confederacy for the extension 
of slavery as its peculiar interest and pride. But they 
refused to adopt slavery, or even to name it ; and though 
the Constitution, in three several phrases, betrays a sub- 
jective consciousness of this abnormal thing as existing 
in society, yet these very phrases were framed with the 
expectation that slavery would die, and the determination, 
that, so far as that instrument was concerned, liberty alone 
should have vital sustenance and active care. The first 
of these oblique phrases occurs in the third paragraph of 
the second section of the first article of the Constitution: 
" Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned 
among the several States which may be included within 
this Union, according to their respective numbers, which 
shall be determined by adding to the whole number of 
free persons, including those bound to service for a term 
of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of 
all other persons." 

Once and again in the course of debate it was proposed 
to designate these " other persons " as " blacks," or 
" slaves ; " and in the draught of the Constitution sub- 
mitted so late as the 12th of September, only five days 
before its final adoption, was the phrase, " those bound to 
servitude for a term of years," which would mean slaves ; 
but this was altered to "those bound to service" which 
might mean apprentices, so averse was the convention to 
stamping servitude upon the Constitution. 

The second phrase is in the first paragraph of the ninth 
section of the first article : " The migration or importa- 
tion of such persons as the several States now existing 
shall think proper to admit shall not be prohibited by the 
Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred 
and eight." Why did they not say, " The slave-trade shall 
not be prohibited " ? .Gouverneur Morris proposed, " The 
importation of slaves into North Carolina, South Carolina, 
and Georgia, shall not be prohibited," &c. ; but, on strong 
objection, he withdrew his amendment. Mr. Dickinson 
moved, " The importation of slaves into such of the States 
as shall permit the same shall not be prohibited," &c. ; 
but this was disagreed to nem. con. The convention 
would not suffer slavery to intrench itself within the Con- 



132 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE, 

stitution by so much as admitting its name. Mr. Madison 
" thought it wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea 
that there could be property in men," and that the liberty 
to import slaves for twenty years would be " dishonorable 
to the American character." J 

The third and last of these oblique phrases was one, the 
forced construction of which, in later years, was the begin- 
ning of that sectional strife that could only be quenched 
in war. It reads, " No person held to service or labor in 
one State under the laws thereof, escaping into another, 
shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be 
discharged from such service or labor, but shall be deliv- 
ered up on claim of the party to whom such service or 
labor may be due " (Art. IV. 2, 3). Every word of this 
clause might stand for runaway apprentices, and every 
verbal obligation be fulfilled by returning such fugitives, 
under the system of apprenticeship as it then existed in 
many States. No doubt runaway slaves were in the con- 
templation of this clause : but the framcrs of the Consti- 
tution regarded slavery as purely a local institution, exist- 
ing only by force of the customs and laws of particular 
States, and not proper to be incorporated with the national 
Constitution ; and, moreover, looking forward to its speedy 
demise, while providing for the mutual recognition among 
the States of their several local laws, so far as to avoid 
legal and judicial collisions, they refused to specify slavery 
as a thing to be guarded hy the national code. I say. 
fused to do this ; for, when the matter was under discus- 
sion in the convention, Gen. Pinckney expressed the wish 
" that some provision should be included in favor of prop- 
erty in slaves ; " and Mr. Butler moved to require " fugi- 
tive slaves and servants to be delivered up like crimi- 
nals." 2 But the convention, set in its purpose not to 
affix the seal of slavery to an instrument of liberty, voted 
down every such proposal ; and, instead of ordering that 
fugitive slaves should be delivered up by force of United- 
States laws and officers, simply provided against a collision 
between State authorities through the opposition of local 
laws and usages. Mr. Madison says, that in the final 
adoption of the clause as it now stands, " on motion of 

1 Madison Papers, iii. IG27-1629. - Ibid., iii. 1147. 



ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION. 133 

Mr. Randolph of Virginia, the word ' servitude ' was struck 
out, and 4 service ' unanimously inserted ; the former being 
thought to express the condition of slaves, and the latter 
the obligation of free persons." No, not even the existence 
of servitude should have place in this charter of liberty. 

The term "person" was studiously adhered to in order 
to exclude from the Constitution the idea of property in 
man. This comes out forcibly in the history of the Fifth 
Amendment proposed by the first Congress under the Con- 
stitution, and ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths 
of the States. This amendment declares that " no person 
shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due 
process of law." Mr. Sumner brought out the fact, that, 
" as originally recommended by North Carolina and Vir- 
ginia, this clause was restrained to the freeman. Its lan- 
guage was, ' No freeman ought to be deprived of his life, 
liberty, or property, but by the law of the land.' ' This 
limitation was rejected, and " person " substituted for 
" freeman." " The word ' person ' in the Constitution em- 
braces every human being within its sphere, whether 
Caucasian, Indian, or African, from the President to the 
slave." l 

In this view, the Supreme Court long ago decided that 
" slavery is a municipal regulation ; is local, and cannot 
exist without authority of law ; " 2 and, when a slave 
escapes into a State where slavery does not exist, " there 
is no principle in the common law, in the law of nations 
or of nature, which authorizes his recapture." 3 The pre- 
vailing construction of the Constitution was, that the re- 
turn of fugitives should be negotiated through State 
courts and officers, the United States simply holding itself 
in reserve in the event of a conflict of laws and of juris- 
diction. The attempt to transform this regulative princi- 

1 Sumner's Speech on Freedom National, Slavery Sectional. 

2 Miller v. McQuarry, 5 McLean, 4(50 ; G-ilbna v. Gorham, 4 McLean, 
412. Quoted by Towle," Analysis of the Constitution, 207, 208. 

3 This view was pronounced also by the supreme courts of slave 
States. Thus, in Mississippi, "Slavery is condemned by reason and the 
laws of nature: it exists, and can exist, only through municipal regula- 
tions" (Harry v. Decker, Walker, R. 42). 

And again, in Kentucky: " We view this as a right existing by positive 
law of a municipal character, ■without foundation in the law of nature or 
the unwritten and common law" (Rankin v. Lydia, 2 Marshall, 470). 
Quoted by Sumner, Speech in Senate 26th August, 1852. 



134 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

pie into an active obligation, to be enforced by the laws, 
the officers, and the people of the United States, making 
the Constitution an instrument for the protection, and 
even the propagation, of slavery, was a wide departure 
from the spirit and intent of the convention of 1787. In 
that body the strongest protests against the slave-trade 
and slavery were from statesmen of Virginia. That bold 
and eloquent orator, Col. George Mason, said of the slave- 
trade, " This infernal traffic originated in the avarice of 
British merchants." And of slavery he said, " It discour- 
ages arts and manufactures. The poor despise labor when 
performed by slaves. They prevent the immigration of 
whites, who really enrich and strengthen a country. 
They produce the most pernicious effect on manners. 
Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring 
the judgment of Heaven on a country. As nations can- 
not be rewarded or punished in the next world, they must 
be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes and effects, 
Providence punishes national sins b} 1 - national calamities. 
He lamented that some of our Eastern brethren had, from 
a lust of gain, embarked in this nefarious traffic. As to 
the States being in possession of the right to import 
slaves, this was the case with many other rights now to 
be properly given up. He held it essential, in every point 
of view, that the General Government should have power 
to prevent the increase of slavery." ! This was on the 
22d August; and then, if ever, the advocates of slavery 
might have taken alarm, since, on the 13th July pre- 
ceding, the Congress of the Confederacy had passed the 
famous ordinance for the government of the territory 
north-west of the River Ohio, which declared (Art. VI.), 
" There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude 
in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment 
of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly con- 
victed." With this pronounced purpose of Congress to 
exclude slavery from the national domain, and to provide 
against its establishment in new States, the defenders of 
slavery might well have been sensitive to the slight put 
upon the system b}^ the omission to name it in the new 
Constitution. But a " proslavery man," an advocate of 

i Reported by Madison, iii. 1400. 



ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION. ^35 

the system upon ethical and political grounds, was in 
those days rarely to be found. Ten of the thirteen States 
had already prohibited the slave-trade, which Great Brit- 
ain did not prohibit till twenty years later. The three 
States whose commercial, domestic, and industrial inter- 
ests were most nearly identified with slavery, obtained 
from the convention only a circuitous pledge that this 
traffic should not be prohibited by Congress before the 
year 1808. Without that concession, the Union could not 
have been formed : but in March, 1794, the Congress of the 
United States prohibited the slave-trade to foreign coun- 
tries 1 (though this traffic was still lively in British 
merchantmen) ; and on the second day of March, 1807, 
twenty-three days before the British Parliament abolished 
the slave-trade, Congress prohibited the importation of 
slaves, the act to take effect on the first day of January, 
1808, the very instant that the tacit, reluctant permission 
of the Constitution should expire. Then, as to the rendi- 
tion of fugitives, the circular of the British Admiralty in 
September, 1875, — like the Fugitive-slave Law of Con- 
gress in 1850, — shows how utterly the government of the 
hour may misrepresent the moral sentiment of a nation, 
though justifying its action by technicalities of law; 
and this whole review may well rebuke the Pharisaism 
of any in England who would taunt America with a sys- 
tem whose dying struggle their ministry, a strong party 
in Parliament, and their leading press, did so much to 
prolong. 2 

1 Sir William Grant, in his famous decision in the case of the A nit dee, in 
1807, distinctly concedes to America this priority in denouncing the slave- 
trade. "In all the former eases of this kind which have come before this 
court, the slave-trade was liable to considerations very different from 
those which belong to it now. It had at that time been prohibited, so far 
as respected carrying slaves to the colonies of foreign nations, by Ameri- 
ca ; but by our own laws it was still allowed. . . . The slave-trade has 
since been totally abolished by this country, and our legislature has pro- 
nounced it to be contrary to the principles of justice and humanity. 
Whatever we might think, as individuals, before, we could not, sitting as 
judges in a British court of justice, regard the trade in that light while 
our own laws permitted it." — 1 Acton's Admiralty Reports, p 240. 

2 At the delivery of the Lecture, a few among my English hearers took 
umbrage at this passage; though the great majority, and these the better 
versed in history and affairs, frankly admitted its truth and justice. 
Gladly would I avoid reminiscences that could give pain to any; but, in 
giving an historical retrospect, I dare not enppress important facts to grati- 
fy my own feelings or the feelings of friends. I think the passage as it 
stands in the text states the facts as they were in well-considered words, 



136 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

At a time when slavery was yet universally recognized, 
the framers of the Constitution saw they must make some 
concession to its existence, or forego the constitution of a 
national republic. Unable to decree the abolition of 
slavey, but anticipating its speedy extinction, they did 
secure the exclusion of slavery by name or express sanc- 
tion from the charter of a free people. How their hopes 
failed, I shall show in the next chapter; but it is not 
for us to doubt their wisdom, or impeach their integrity. 
In making a new chemical compound, it may be important 
to eliminate it from some deleterious substance : but, in 
experimenting for this, it is not worth while to begin with 
blowing up the laboratory and its operators ; better wait 
till retorts, walls, and bomb-proofs are strong enough to 
risk the explosion. Had Luther separated Church from 
State, and taken sides with the peasants in their war, how 
different might have been the fate of Germany and the 
Reformation! Yes; but did not Luther do enough? Did 
not our fathers do enough? Or are we so imioble as to 

and none too strongly. Our grievance against Great Britain during the 
M-ar of 18G1-G5 Was not a financial one. The payment of damages caused 
by allowing the Alabama to put out from an English port was indeed a 
question to he sell led between the two governments; hut, in common 
with all high-minded Americans abroad, I felt humiliated when the gov- 
ernment of the United Stales brought before the Geneva tribunal the 
preposterous demand for " indirect claims." Tins was absurd enough as a 
bit of exaggerated rhetoric from the lips of Mr. Sumner, — what Mr, Benton 
would have called "a stump-speech in the belly of the bill: " but from the 
government as a formal demand, if seriously meant, it was childish; if 
meant, for effect, it was a bit of chicanery grotesque and mortifying to the 
last, degree. We have not yet recovered in Europe from this official 
proclamation of our "mercenary" character. .No ! money was not our 
grievance against Great Britain: it was that she went back on her own 
traditions of freedom and amity. She was allied to us by treaty; yet, 
while our accredited ambassador was known to be on his way, she made 
haste to give the Rebellion a belligerent status by the proclamation of 
"neutrality." England had in many ways admonished us of the evil of 
slavery; yet when known antislavery men assured her that the Rebellion 
was in the interest of slavery, and must, prove its doom, their voices were 
not. heard. We had in Britain many true and noble friends, whose fidelity 
to freedom and to international comity deserves all praise. But the visible 
currents of English feeling set strongly toward secession, and there was 
no prompt, national uprising of Christian England in sympathy for our 
cause. Perhaps it was better for us that we went through the si niggle 
without that sympathy; but it was not so well for England in the estimate 
of thoughtful and Christian Americans. Her moral failure in this great 
emergency of Freedom was to us a wonder and a grief. Thus much the 
simple truth demands of one whose whole life attests that he has never 
spoken ill of England. The record must speak for itself. A just recogni- 
tion of past mistakes may be the surest preparation for good understand- 
ing and cordial comity in the future. 



ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION. 137 

complain that they did not leave us a perfect society, in 
which we might sit at our ease, with nothing to test our 
patriotism, or discipline our manhood? Over the grave of 
slavery, — a grave so vast that it swallowed up five hun- 
dred thousand sons of America who should have been 
brothers, — a grave in which, O brethren of the South ! 
my body and blood are buried with yours, — let us be just 
to the memory of the fathers, and strike hands in perpet- 
ual fealty to their Constitution of freedom ! 

The other point in which the wisdom of the convention 
of 1787 shone supreme in that which it rejected was its 
steadfast refusal to admit into the new Constitution the 
principle of a confederation of States. There was already 
such a confederation, which members of this convention 
had assisted to frame. The Congress of that confederation 
was then in session : the members of the convention sat 
as the delegates of States, and voted by States, the major- 
ity of each delegation casting the single vote of their 
State ; and yet this council of States, in providing a Con- 
stitution for the future, repudiated the very basis upon 
which itself was formed. One has but to read, side by side, 
the preambles to the Confederation and the Constitution, 
to mark this significant change. The first opens as fol- 
lows : " Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union 
between the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts 
Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connec- 
ticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, 
Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and 
Georgia." Art. III. — " The said States hereby severally 
enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for 
their common defence, the security of their liberties, and 
their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to 
assist each other against all force offered to or attacks 
made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, 
sovereignty, trade, or any other pretence whatever." Here 
is no constitution, no body knit together as one being, 
its every part held and swayed by an inward law of life 
and growth, but a mere pact, — a pasteboard body without 
brain or heart, the limbs articulated with strings, which, 
though capable of pulling all together, have a propensity 
to individual jerks, at all times hang loosely, and may at 



138 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

any moment snap asunder. It can be safely predicated of 
such a body, that it won't work just when you most want 
it to. This confederate body, pieced together by " Arti- 
cles," never had an executive head, but in the recess of 
Congress was represented by " a committee of the States." 

Turn from this to the grand announcement that heralds 
the government under which the United States have lived 
since the 4th of March, 1789: "We, the people of the 
United States, in order to form a more perfect union, 
establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for 
the common defence, promote the general welfare, and 
secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our pos- 
terity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the 
United States of America." Ah ! we feel here the heart 
of the nation, beating with the consciousness of unity and 
of imperishable life ; beating with the strong instinct of 
right, and the calm spirit of peace ; beating with even 
pulse for the good of all ; beating with high hope for us 
and our children, for liberty and man. 

This change from a treaty of States to a national Con- 
stitution was made with the utmost deliberation, and was 
contested at every step by the adherents of the old notion 
of a confederacy. After some preliminary skirmishing 
in the committee of the whole, this fundamental question 
between the federal plan and the national plan was the 
subject of debate for five consecutive days, — a debate in 
which most of the leading minds of the convention took 
part, and Randolph, Hamilton, and Madison made*those 
great and now historic speeches that settled the govern- 
ment upon the basis of national unity. The debate ranged 
about two conflicting propositions. The first, moved by Mr. 
Patterson in the interest of the smaller States, "Resolved, 
That the Articles of Confederation ought to be so revised, 
corrected, and enlarged, as to render the Federal Constitu 
tion adequate to the exigencies of government and the 
preservation of the Union : " the second, moved by Mr. 
Randolph, and recommended by the committee of the 
whole, " Resolved, That a national government ought to 
be established, consisting of a supreme legislative, execu- 
tive, and judiciary." There was no attempt to blink the 
issue raised by these rival propositions. It was seen from 



ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION". 13 9 

the first that there could be no compromise between the 
two plans. Mr. Lansing said, " That of Mr. Patterson 
sustains the sovereignty of the respective States ; that of 
Mr. Randolph destroys it." And Mr. Randolph himself 
said, " The true question is, whether we shall adhere to 
the federal plan, or introduce the national plan." Each 
plan was searched and sifted by an exhaustive debate, at 
the close of which the convention resolved " that the 
government of the United States ought to consist of a 
supreme legislative, executive, and judiciary, " 1 and so 
gave the coup de grace to the expiring confederacy. That 
the convention so interpreted its own act is clear from 
the letter of Washington, its president, to the president 
of Congress, in submitting the Constitution to that body : 
" It is obviously impracticable, in the federal government 
of these States, to secure all rights of independent sov- 
ereignty to each, and yet provide for the interest and 
safety of all. Individuals entering into society must give 
up a share of liberty to preserve the rest. ... In all 
our deliberations on this subject, we kept steadily in our 
view that which appears to us the greatest interest of 
every true American, — the consolidation of our Union, 
in which is involved our prosperity, felicity, safet}^, perhaps 
our national existence." On the 17th September, 1787, 
the convention finished its work : on the 28th September, 
Congress transmitted the new Constitution to the legisla- 
tures of the several States, " in order to be submitted to 
a convention of delegates chosen in each State by the 
people thereof." And now this new plan of government, 
as it was universally regarded, had to undergo the ordeal 
of these popular tribunals. The battle that had been 
fought out in the Federal convention was renewed in 
each State convention, and raged with peculiar violence 
in the State of New York, where Hamilton, Madison, and 
Jay did such sturdy service to the cause of national gov- 
ernment by their essays under the title of " The Federal- 
ist," which soon took rank with the higher statesmanship 
of the day. At length, by the close of July, 1788, ten 
months after its adoption in convention, the new Consti- 
tution was ratified by eleven States, — Delaware, Pennsyl- 

1 Madison Papers, ii. 838-909. 



140 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

vania, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, 
Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia, New 
York. North Carolina held aloof till Nov. 21, 1789 ; and 
on May 20, 1790, spunky little Rhody entered into the 
family, not seeing how she could longer maintain her sov- 
ereignty alone. Thus the league resting upon sovereign 
States was repudiated for the Union emerging out of the 
sovereignty of the people. The issue raised by war in 
1861 was settled by wisdom more than seventy years 
before ; and as we think upon the dignity, the consist- 
ency, the vigor, and the glory of the nation as manifested 
through its Constitution, let us not forget how much we 
owe to the prudence, the patience, the patriotism, of the 
convention of 1787, and, above all, of Alexander Hamil- 
ton of New York, and James Madison and Edmund Ran- 
dolph of Virginia. 1 

Of the positive virtues of the Constitution it is less 
necessary that I should speak in detail ; yet I must point 
out how each of its leading provisions for the actual gov- 
ernment is, at the same time, a protection against a peril 
that might have destroyed the republic. To have ad- 
mitted in the Constitution a ricdit of secession would 
have brought on board a case of d}*namite with a clock- 
work adjusted to explode it, and blow up the ship of state 
within a given number of days. But so vigilant were the 
framers of the Constitution against inflammable and explo- 
sive material, that nothing could be smuggled on board 
under an evasive manifest ; but every article was subjected 
to a thorough search. 2 Popular government was to be 
maintained, but the risks of popular excitement and 
vacillation, and of mobocracy, to be guarded against : so 
the people are left in possession of local government 

i Though at the last Mr. Randolph declined to si^n the Constitution as 
a whole, it, was lie that iirst introduced and advocated in the convention 
the plan of a national government. 

2 In Switzerland there exists among the cantons a federal pact, without 
the national unity that characterizes the government of the United States. 
In 1840 a separate league was formed between the Catholic cantons, 
known as the Sonderbund, and based upon the doctrine that the federal 
pact was "a mere alliance of independent and sovereign states, each of 
them at liberty to put their own construction upon it, and break it when- 
ever they chose." This pretence was resisted with the whole strength of 
the Diet; and Mr. Grote, in his Letter.-; on the Politics of Switzerland, has 
shown that it would lead to the annihilation of all government. 



ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION. 141 

under the laws of the several States, and enabled to par- 
ticipate directly in the general government by choosing 
their representatives in Congress, and also the electors of 
a President, in such way as their State legislatures may 
direct. They can change their representatives every two 
years ; but a gust of popular passion that might sweep 
away the whole government with one blast, and toss its 
policy like a shuttlecock, is checked by a presidential 
term of four years, and hj the Senate as a constant factor 
in the government, whose composition can be changed 
only gradually during a period of six years. The integ- 
rity of the State organizations was to be preserved, and 
their dignity respected : yet provision must be made 
against aristocratic cabals of State powers against the 
liberties of Jhe people, and rebellious cabals against the 
national authority ; and so each State — without regard to 
age, area, or population — has two senators chosen by its 
legislature : but in the Senate, instead of voting as in the 
Confederate Congress by States, each senator may at any 
time vote against his colleague, and ally himself with 
another party and policy, or act with entire independence ; 
so that State dictation or cabal is hardly possible, even in 
the Senate appointed by the States. Nor can the Senate 
erect itself into an aristocracy, since there is the House 
of Representatives, fresh every two years from the people, 
to hold in check any aristocratic usurpation, especially by 
a vital grip upon the purse-strings. 

By this happy balancing of powers, the State — which 
should properly be an outward formal expression of so- 
ciety itself — is made to rest, not upon any class of per- 
sons or of interests, but upon that combination of classes 
and interests that represents human nature in its totality. 
The dual system adjusts the two elements in society that 
answer to the quantitative and the qualitative in nature. 1 
These elements are the democratic and the aristocratic, 
here combined in the representative and constitutional 

1 "In alien Volkern von hoherer Art ist ein innerer Gegensatz zwischen 
deni Demos uud der Aristokratie vorhanden, welcher mit dein Gegensatze der 
Quantitut uud Qualitut in der Natur zusammenhangt" (Bluntsclili : Allge- 
meiues Statsreeht, b. ii. c. iv.). Bluntsclili computes, that, in Europe, the 
system of two Chambers is adopted by a hundred and seventy-three mil- 
lions; that of one Chamber, by only niue millions. 



142 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

republic. While deinagogism, mobocracy, and aristocracy 
are thus guarded against, there is also provision against 
absolutism. The nation must have an executive head ; 
but this must not admit of the " one-man power." The 
electors of the President are chosen either directly by the 
people, or mediately by the legislatures of the States. 
The electors in each State vote apart, and send a list of 
their ballots, certified and sealed, to the president of the 
Senate at Washington ; so that popular sovereignty and 
State organization are both respected in the provisions for 
electing the head of the nation, though in practice one or 
both may be reduced to a fiction. The President can 
make no laws, and assume no powers ; and for attempt 
at usurpation, or other malfeasance in office, he may be 
impeached by the House, and tried by the Senate. But 
though he is thus hedged in from all personal aggrandize- 
ment and dictatorial power, yet, in his official character, he 
can, upon occasion, wield an authority more than imperial ; 
for he is the executive of the collective will and might of 
the people, and " he shall take care that the laws be faith- 
fully executed." 

The three great departments of government — legislative, 
executive, and judicial — are by this Constitution clearly 
distinguished, and set in stable equipoise. Though the 
President cannot make laws, nor even originate them, his 
signature is required to give validity to an act of Congress ; 
and he can withhold this, or can veto any act that he does 
not approve. But, in either case, the act may still become 
a law : in the first, by the lapse of ten days (if Congress is 
still in session) ; in the second, by the concurrence of two- 
thirds of both houses in repassing it. Hence, if Congress 
is rash, the President can check it; if the President is 
stubborn, Congress can override him: and it may some- 
times happen that the House, the Senate, and the Presi- 
dent are each a check upon the other ; as, for instance, in 
this year 1876, the House is Democratic, the Senate Re- 
publican, while the President seems to have resolved " to 
fight it out on his own line." Again : should both Presi- 
dent and Congress be rash or partisan, there remains the 
judiciary, whose officers hold during good behavior, and 
sit aloof from the political excitements of the hour ; and 



ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION. 143 

the Supreme Court of the United States may set aside 
acts of Congress approved by the President, as unconsti- 
tutional and invalid. That court can maintain the right 
of the humblest citizen against a wrong committed by the 
whole power of the United States, legislative and execu- 
tive. But, when a law is constitutional, there can be no 
pretence of authority in any quarter against it, nor of right 
in any body to resist it ; for " this Constitution, and the 
laws of the United States which shall be made in pursu- 
ance thereof, shall be the supreme law of the land ; and 
the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any 
thing in the Constitution or laws of any State to the 
contraiy notwithstanding : " for the United States are a 
nation ; and the people, not the states, have ordained and 
established the Constitution. Such was the government 
which went into practical operation on the fourth day of 
March, 1789. 1 

1 The successful framing of such a government was due, in no small 
measure, to the political spirit in which the people had been trained. Self- 
government, unity or co-operation, representative authority, and reverence 
for law, were principles or habits to which the colonists," and especially 
those 01 New England, had been accustomed. Their political institutions 
were based upon these principles; their political spirit was governed by 
them. The contrast in these particulars between the English and the 
Erench settlements in North America is thus pithily stated by Mr. Park- 
man in his New France : — 

" The New-England colonists were far less fugitives from oppression than volun- 
tary exiles seeking the realization of an idea. They were neither peasants nor sol- 
diers, but a substantial Puritan yeomanry, led by Puritan gentlemen and divines in 
thorough sympathy with them. They we're neither sent out by the king, governed 
by him, nor helped by him. They grew up in utter neglect ; and continued neglect 
was the only boon they asked. Till their increasing strength roused the jealousy of 
the crown, they were virtually independent; a republic, but by no means a democracy. 
They chose their own governor and all their rulers from among themselves, made 
their own government and paid for it, supported their own clergy, defended them- 
selves, and educated themselves. Under the hard and repellent surface of New- 
England society lay the true foundations of a stable freedom, — conscience, reflection, 
faith, patience, and public spirit. The cement of common interests, hopes, and duties, 
compacted the whole people like a rock of conglomerate; while the people of New 
France remained in a state of political segregation, like a basket of pebbles held 
together by the enclosure that surrounds them." 

This was owing to the fact that the French colonies had no " people," 
in the political sense of that term. And indeed, to this day, France has 
hardly recovered from the long historical dependence of the people as sub- 
jects upon the State as sovereign. M. Simon, in his eulogy of Remusat, 
said, — 

"We are a people who only know how to display excessive resignation, or to rush 
into revolutions. De Remusat jocosely said, ' There are a crowd ot people in France 
who have only two tastes, — receiving commands, and firing muskets. When tired of 
one exercise, they pass to the other.' Our history only too much confirms him. Few 
peoples have passed so often as we from servitude to liberty, and from liberty to eervi- 



144 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

In all the stages of the organization of the American peo- 
ple as a nation, — the war of the Revolution, the Declara- 
tion of Independence, 1 the Confederacy, and finally, the 
Constitution, — it is a pregnant fact, that no measure nor 
movement was started in the interest of any person, sys- 
tem, or party ; but every step was taken for principle and 
for the common good of the country. Indeed, there was a 
remarkable jealousy of personal influence and power. The 
war began without a commander-in-chief ; and, at its close, 
the general, who had shared alike its trials and its tri- 
umphs, retired to private life. He desired no office, and 
there was no office for him to fill, since the government 
of the Confederacy, which came into existence during 
the war, avoided any provision for an executive head. 
When the deficiency of that government became mani- 
fest, there was no attempt in any quarter to put forth a 
new organization under a specific leader, nor to use the 
name of any leader as an argument for the organization. 
The movement for a revision of the government arose 
spontaneously in many quarters, with no concerted plan. 
The notion of a national government, with one supreme 

tiidc; and, to make matters worse, when we establish liberty, wo leave in our midst, 
through want of time and foresight, all the instruments of depotism." 

Lest this should pass for the brilliant antithesis that French oratory 
delights in, I subjoin the sober, philosophical statement of Laboulaye: — 

" The French system reposes upon the Roman idea of the sovereignty of the State. 
The government is not alone the arm of the nation : it is the soul of it. Ko doubt the 
State seeks to inform itself: it surrounds itself with chambers, with advisers, with 
men versed in affaire; but politically it is the State alone that wills and does. Repub- 
lic or monarchy, France is always an army that lives by the thought of its chiefs. 
This fashion of conceivhig the rdfe of government is not new: it was that of Richelieu 
and of Louis XIV. ; since 1789, it has been that of all parties." 

This was said in 185!) in an essay on Alexis de Tocqueville; and it is yet 
too soon to change materially the statement as a contrast of the French 
with the American system, "in his essay on " L'Etat et ses Limites,"* 
Laboulaye struck the philosophy of this contrast:-— 

" It is a fine thing to exhibit to the world a country rich and industrious, an heroic 
armv, a powerful navy, embellished cities, splendid monuments: but there is some- 
thing more admirable and more grand than all these wonders; that is, the force which 
produces them. This force, which cannot be too much economized (therein lies the 
whole secret of politics), — this force, which too many governments slight and neglect, 
— is the individual; and if there is one truth that science demonstrates, and that his- 
tory cries out to us, it is, that in religion, in morals, in politics, in industry, in the 
sciences, in letters, in the arts, the individual us nothing but through liberty." 

* L\ 102. 

1 Congress met in New York ou that day; but, for lack of a quorum, 
the votes for President were not counted until April 6; and, on the oUth 
of April, Washington took the oath of office as President. 



ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION. 145 

head, came in gradually, and, after the most thorough 
canvassing by conventions, was accepted as necessary to 
the safety and welfare of the nation, and not at all 
through popular enthusiasm for any man as the predes- 
tined leader. Yet the man was there, the typical man, 
the embodiment of the national idea, the predestined 
leader of the people, first to independence, and next to 
organized and perpetual liberty ; and so, when on the 
7th of January, 1789, the several States chose their elect- 
ors for the first President, but one name was in their minds 
and hearts; and when on the 4th of February, in each 
State apart, those electors met, but one name was cast into 
every urn ; and when again, on the 6th of April, in pres- 
ence of both houses of Congress, those sealed ballots were 
all opened and declared, there was but one name to be pro- 
nounced, — George Washington, unanimously elected 
first President of the United States of America. 

The period from 1730 to 1815, so fruitful of great 
events in the political condition of the world, makes an 
epoch in the history of modern civilization. Within that 
period Prussia rose to the rank of a first-class military 
power, and laid the foundation of that inward strength 
and that outward respect which make her to-day a leader 
in the affairs of Germany and of Europe. The American 
Revolution established a new nation and a new order of 
political society upon the continent where England, 
JJrance, and Spain had struggled for supremacy. The 
French Revolution, upheaving and overturning every 
institution of France itself, poured its fiery tide over 
the Alps and the Rhine. The French Empire made and 
unmade kings and peoples, and swept Europe with its 
armies from Portugal to Russia. The fall of that em- 
pire brought in the reconstruction of Europe with the 
balance of powers. In this world-making era, marking 
its beginning, its middle, and its end, stand three figures, 
each inapproachable by others of his time, and imper- 
ishable in personal grandeur and historic moment. His- 
tory has no other example of three men, their lives 
overlapping each other, all severally so great in war, in 
statesmanship, and in executive administration, at event- 
ful crises of their respective nations, which they shaped 



146 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

and guided by their own powers. In their relations to 
the great problems of political society and of human 
welfare, it may be said of the first, that he was the only 
man of his country in his time ; of the second, it must 
be said he was the best man of his country in his time and 
for all time ; of the third, that he was the foremost man 
of his country in his time, but, in seeking to make himself 
her only man, fell sadly short of the wisest and the best. 
For him, at least, the verdict of history is not yet settled, 
even in his own nation. The generation dazzled with 
glory was too soon followed by a generation darkened 
with detraction. Lights and shadows still flit across the 
Arc de Triomphe. There was enough of glory for France 
in what he had done to make it an object to piece 
together the broken Colonne Yendume, but nothing of 
personal veneration or enthusiasm in placing him again at 
its head. But the people of the United States have never 
passed but one verdict upon their hero ; and to that verdict 
History has put her seal with the approval of all good and 
noble men. His presence is yet so real and so loved, that 
Americans seem to shrink from transforming into stone 
and bronze the Father who still lives in the hearts of his 
countrymen. The fame of Washington is of a quality so 
distinct and incontestable, there is no need to depreciate 
the greatness of others with a view to exaggerate his : 
rather, the more we exalt others for the separate qualities 
in which they were brilliant or eminent, the more does he 
stand apart from and above them all in that combination 
of excellences that is peculiarly his own ; even as, in 
approaching Mount Washington or Mont Blanc, the 
heights that awed you from below you must mount over 
on your way toward him, and find these but parts of the 
vast foundation on which he towers, or gatewa}*s to his 
temple. The versatile genius of Frederic the Great, his 
sagacity, brilliancy, epigrammatic wit, his soldierly dash, 
fertility, inventiveness, his determined selfhood as general, 
sovereign, author, man, are qualities we can hardly ascribe 
to Washington, certainly in no comparable degree; but 
neither had Washington the vanity of Frederic, his self- 
assertion, his arbitrary will, his fitful unscrupulousness. 
He could never have written, for he could never have 



ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION. \Afl 

felt, what Frederic has recorded of his motives for invading 
Silesia: "Ambition, interest, and the desire of making 
people talk about me, carried the day; and I decided for 
war." l That is frank, but hardly fine. 

The world-wide grasp of Napoleon, his power of combi- 
nation and concentration alike in battles and in laws, his 
quick origination and bold execution, his magnificent and 
terrible audacity, are qualities of heroism that we cannot 
ascribe to Washington ; but neither had Washington the 
intense ambition, the inordinate selfishness, the reckless, 
despotic egotism, of Napoleon. In seeking his own fame, 
Frederic never lost sight of the aggrandizement of Prus- 
sia ; and his personality was a magnified and intensified 
patriotism, which shone undimmed to the moment of his 
death. His country owes him lasting gratitude and honor. 2 
Napoleon was never lost to the glory of France and of la 
grande armee ; but he would make that glory tributary to 
his own, and feed the people with flattery that they might 
swell his fame. Frederic was the man for his kingdom ; 
France was a nation for Napoleon ; Washington was the 
man of his country and for his country, who freed and led 
his nation for liberty and mankind. The passion that ruled 
the soul of Washington showed scarce a spark in Frederic 
or Napoleon, — devotion to liberty and to man, without 
one thought of self. 3 It is with an admiration bordering 
upon awe, and a sense of humiliation for all pettinesses of 
our own, that we read the reply of Washington to the 
overture of his finally victorious army to erect a military 
government with himself at its head : " Be assured, sir, no 
occurrence in the course of the war has given me more 
painful sensations than your information of there being 
such ideas existing in the army as you have expressed, 
and I must view with abhorrence, and reprehend with 
severity. I am much at a loss to conceive what part of 
my conduct could have given encouragement to an ad- 
dress which to me seems big with the greatest mischiefs 
that can befall my country. If I am not deceived in the 
knowledge of myself, you could not have found a person 

1 Carlyle attempts to tone this down; but it must stand as a self -revela- 
tion of character. 

2 See note at the close of the Lecture. 3 Ibid. 



148 CEXTENNIAL OF AMERICAN IXDEPEXDEXCE. 

to whom your schemes are more disagreeable. . . . Let 
me conjure you, if you have any regard for your country, 
concern for yourself or posterity, or respect for me, to ban- 
ish these thoughts from your mind, and never communi- 
cate, as from yourself or any one else, a sentiment of the 
like nature." 1 

No sooner was peace concluded than this immaculate 
general, who for eight years had served his country with- 
out ambition and without pay, appeared before Congress 
to return the commission he had received at their hands. 
" The great events on which my resignation depended 
having at length taken place, I now have the honor of 
offering my sincere congratulations to Congress, and of pre- 
senting myself before them to surrender into their hands 
the trust committed to me, and to claim the indulgence 
of retiring from the service of my country. ... I consider 
it an indispensable duty to close this last solemn act of my 
official life by commending the interests of our dearest 
country to the protection of Almighty God, and those 
who have the superintendence of them to his holy keep- 
ing. . . . Having now finished the work assigned me, I 
retire from the great theatre of action ; and bidding an 
affectionate farewell to this august body, under whose 
orders I have long acted, I here offer my commission, and 
take my leave of all the employments of public life." 

A few days after, he wrote to a friend, " I hope to spend 
the remainder of my days in cultivating the affections of 
good men, and in the practice of the domestic virtues." 

Frederic the Great died ; and, twenty years after, the 
Prussia that he had created lay dismantled, dismembered, 
disgraced, at the dictation of Napoleon. Napoleon abdi- 
cated ; and France has wandered between revolution and 
despotism, through all forms of government, seeking rest, 
and finding none. Washington twice voluntarily retired 
from the highest posts of influence and power, — the head 
of the army, the head of the state ; but the freedom he 
had won by the sword, the institutions he had organized 
as president of the Federal Convention, the government 
he had administered as President of the Union, remained 
unchanged, and have grown in strength and majesty 
through all the growing years. 

i Irving' s Life of Washington, iv. 



ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION. I49 

This significant contrast is, no doubt, to be explained 
largely by the characters and conditions of the peoples 
of Prussia, France, and the United States ; yet the char- 
acters of the leaders had also no mean influence upon the 
consequence to their peoples of their own departure from 
the scene of action. Each has left a voluminous tran- 
script of his life in his correspondence and other papers. 
In the memoirs of Frederic, often the peevish and perverse, 
sometimes the petty mars the brilliancy of his mind and 
the honesty of his heart. And what men he chose to 
have around, or rather under him ! As Napoleon is un- 
veiled in letters and memoirs, how is his glory tarnished 
by the mean, the selfish, the wicked ! how unscrupulous 
in the use of unscrupulous tools for unscrupulous ends ! 
But in reading the correspondence of Washington, — let~ 
ters covering a long series of years and a vast variety of 
circumstances, written often under conditions of doubt, 
of danger, of discouragement and detraction, — though one 
may find a uniformity of goodness that is sometimes tame, 
and to some temperaments even tiresome, yet he finds no 
word nor thought that is little or selfish or vain. 1 

Those who estimate greatness only by illustrious 
achievements may wonder how a general who fought 
so few battles, and was so habitually on the line of de- 
fence or of retreat, should be acknowledged among the 
foremost generals of the world : but the crossing of the 
Delaware, the battles of Trenton, Princeton, Monmouth, 
his whole handling of the British in New York and New 
Jersey, and the victorious siege of Yorktown, showed in 
Washington a combination of all the qualities that achieve 
military fame ; while his patient courage in overcoming 
every obstacle that jealousy, faction, delay, want of 

1 A correspondent of the London Chronicle of July 22, 1780, thus de- 
scribed Washington : "There is a remarkable air of dignity about hirn, 
-with a striking degree of gracefulness: he has an excellent understanding, 
without much quickness; is strictly just, vigilant, and generous; an affec- 
tionate husband, a faithful friend, a father to the deserving soldier; gentle 
in his manners; in temper rather reserved; a total stranger to religious 
prejudices. . . . No man ever united in his own character a more perfect 
alliance of the virtues of the philosopher with the talents of a general. 
Candor, sincerity, affability, and simplicity seem to be the striking fea- 
tures of his character, until an occasion offers of displaying the most 
determined bravery and independence of spirit." — Moore's Diary of the 
Revolution, ii. 301. 



150 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

money, men, arms, ammunition, could throw in his way, 
justifies the saying, that " misfortunes are the element in 
which he shines," x and shows us how, like William of 
Orange, he " was slowly compassing a country's emancipa- 
tion through a series of defeats." 2 

Those who estimate greatness by memorable sayings of 
wit or wisdom, or novel and striking utterances of thought, 
may marvel how one whose average official papers con- 
tained so many political and moral commonplaces, ex- 
pressed with a stately formality of style, 3 should be 
acknowledged anions: the foremost statesmen of the 
world ; but Washington's Farewell Address to the People 
of the United States is a disquisition upon government, 
that in depth of political wisdom, breadth of practical 
statesmanship, loftiness of moral principle, historical in- 
sight into tendencies, and prophetic foresight of conse- 
quences, is unsurpassed by any document that any states- 
man has yet given to the world. 4 

But we come back once more to his correspondence ; 
and, as we turn over page after page of the volumes of 
Sparks, how the conviction grows upon us, that, in the 
author of these letters, we see not only the noblest man- 
hood, but the highest wisdom also, in that rare and mas- 
terly good sense which has understanding of men and of 
times ! 

The greatness of Washington centred in his moral 
equipoise. Never did he seek occasion for himself; but 
from the young surveyor and adjutant of Virginia to the 
commander of the American army, and from the diffident 
member of the legislature and of Congress to the Presi- 

1 William Hooper of North Carolina. 

2 Motley: Uise of the Dutch Republic, iii. 145. 

8 As one example of commonplace sentiments in a stilted style, take 
the following passage from "Washington's reply to the congratulations of 
the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church upon his election to the 
presidency: — 

" While I reiterate the professions of my dependence upon Heaven as the source 
of all public and private blessings, I will observe, that the general prevalence of piety, 
philanthropy, honesty, industry, and economy, seems, in the ordinary course of human 
affairs, particularly necessary for advancing and confirming the happiness of our 
country. While all men within our territories are protected in worshipping the 
Deity according to the dictates of their consciences, it is rationally to be expected from 
them, in return, that they will all be emulous of evincing the sanctity of their profes- 
sions by the innocence of their lives and the beneficence of their actions; for no man 
who is profligate in his morals, or a bad member of the civil community, can possibly 
be a true Christian, or a credit to his own religious society." 

4 See note on Hamilton's agency at end of Lecture. 



NOTE 0>T FEEDEEIC AND KAPOLEOK 151 

dent of the United States, whatever occasion came to 
Washington he was ready to meet it, and did what was 
laid upon him with balanced judgment, unfaltering sereni- 
ty, unselfish integrity, and that perfect command of him- 
self that gaye him command of men and of powers. The 
great men of his time who were nearest him most honored 
him ; the people loved and revered him ; humanity has 
adopted him. The hearts of all peoples, sated with the 
fame of captains and heroes, look up to Washington as the 
man. Humanity finds its highest hope in the realization 
in him of its own ideal. And it is a high hope for humani- 
ty that it accepts him as its type of greatness ; for, in the 
words of Brougham, " until time shall be no more will a 
test of the progress which our race has made in wisdom 
and virtue be derived from the veneration paid to the 
immortal name of Washington." America, at least, can 
have no higher : for her he shall stand " first in war, first 
in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen." 



NOTE ON FREDERIC AND NAPOLEON. 

At the close of this Lecture in Berlin, one German lady said to 
another, " How can yon endure to hear Frederic the Great spoken of 
so slightingly ? This may all be true : but he was every thing to us ; 
and it seems like exposing the faults of one's father." 

" But," answered the other, " this picture of Frederic is true. My 
grandfather was in his service for many years, first as page, then as 
officer ; and in our family we always knew of these unhappy traits of 
Frederic's character. It is all too true ; and why shouldn't it be 
said ? " 

When the conversation was reported to me, I contented myself 
with saying, " If the judgment is not correct, it can't hurt Frederic's 
reputation with you ; and, if it is true, his reputation ought still to be 
great enough to bear it." 

I would not be wanting in respect for the devotion that clings to a 
national hero in spite of his defects, and even refuses to see any dim- 
ness in the halo of his fame. Indeed, I may as well confess to a cos- 
mopolitan weakness for everybody's heroes. An advocate of peace, I 
have, however, no sympathy with the spirit that denounces all mili- 
tary heroes as scourges of mankind, and that will not allow that war 
can ever be a school of true greatness. But there is a standard of 
heioic judgment higher than military achievement, even among the 



152 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

heroes of battle ; and -when we are weighing men in the scale of his- 
tory, with a view to selecting models for after-ages, we must do jus- 
tice, though the heavens fall. And surely, if justice is done, some 
stars must either fall from heaven, or be greatly changed as to position 
and magnitude. 

" Only on the sad 
Cold earth there are who say 
It seemethbetterto be great than glad." 

It is not easy for an American to enter into the enthusiasm for 
military glory that still possesses the more intellectual portion of 
society on the continent of Europe. Under the conditions of modern 
warfare that have so nearly reduced war to an exact science, and 
armies to calculating machines, there is far less opportunity for 
strokes of military genius than in the days of Frederic and of Napo- 
leon. But the glorification of the military spirit survives in the 
homage paid in so many countries to the army as the foremost repre- 
sentative of the national life and power : hence, in estimating histori- 
cal characters, and ranging heroes in the Walhalla, the European is 
apt to have another standard from the American, who is trained to 
look for greatness rather in high moral qualities, and in devotion to 
mankind. A striking and really a touching instance of the military 
estimate of life lies before me at this moment. The venerable Field- 
Marshal Count Wrangel has just completed the eightieth year of his 
military service, having entered the army at the age of thirteen. At 
the celebration of this so unusual anniversary, his Majesty the Em- 
peror sent him the following letter : — 

My dear General Field-Marshal, — The festive remembrancers of 
your most active life more and more take on the character of a specially 
favoring Providence. The jubilee of your fifty-years' service, most com- 
monly the close of a military life, lies to-day thirty years behind you; and 
in these thirty years lie such great services and such eminent deeds,' that 
with you the fiftieth-year jubilee has marked only the beginning of the 
second division of your famous career. To-day it is full eighty year; that 
you have worn with such distinction the honorable dress of the soldier; 
and above all things must you to-day be filled with deep emotion at the 
grace of Almighty God, who has honored 3*011 above so many others, in 
that you are able to look back over so long a time of most praiseworthy 
activity. To him, the gracious God, before all, be the honor of this day's 
festival. But I speak not for myself alone, but as the heir of three kings, 
as deeply moved I to-day thank you in the name of those kings, to whom 
you have kept the oath of fidelity in such an exemplary manner, and 
whom you have served with such siguality and devotion, that your name 
for all time will hold an honored place in the history of the Prussian army. 
That with my whole heart I number you with the prominent men whom 
the Prussian army has produced, I wish to-day to prove by apprising 3-011 
that I have concluded at a future day to erect a statue of you, that there- 
by the latest posterity may retain the knowledge of your services, and my 
appreciation of them. 

As a remembrancer of this day I send you the accompanying sword, 
the weapon that 3'ou have worn for eighty 3 T ears, with which at Etoges, 
with your regiment, you cut through the enemy, and which has every- 
where shown the troops that 3-ou have led the way to victory. As the 
statue to the world, so may the sword to your remote posterity bear wit- 
ness of the gratitude and special esteem of 

Your grateful, devoted king, 

AVli-HELH. 



NOTE ON FBEDEBIC AND NAPOLEON. 153 

This beautiful example of life-long loyalty and of royal friendship 
will be its own monument in history, — honorable alike to the sub- 
ject and the king. Its influence upon all younger officers will be 
most stimulating. Said one of these to me the other clay, "You 
republicans cannot know the sentiment of personal loyalty to the 
king. This devotion is the life of an officer ; and there is something 
in it so very noble and fine." Here was a spirit that would never 
stop to inquire whether a king was right or wrong; whether the cause 
is noble or base, just or cruel. This is the true spirit of the soldier. 
We find it admirably expressed by Gen. Sherman in his answers to 
the congressional committee upon the employment of troops in the 
South. 

The Chairman. — The object of my inquiry was to ascertain wheth- 
er troops could be spared from the South to re-enforce the army in 
the Indian country. 

Gen. Sherman. — I am compelled to answer that they cannot be 
spared, because those who are intrusted with power judge their pres- 
ence there necessary. That decision to me is sacred and final, and 
governs me. 

Mr. Terry. — You do not, however, say that it is your judgment. 

Gen. Sherman. — It is hardly right to ask a soldier for his opinion. 
Behind his duty he ought not to form an opinion. 

This is the only doctrine for a soldier. One can respect it, and 
honor the man who is true to it. Without this, there could be no 
military discipline ; and, so long as an army is needed for police or 
for defence, it is vital to the public safety and order that this unques- 
tioning loyalty should be maintained. The saying of Kossuth, 
"Bayonets think," marks the subversion of all military order and 
authority. 

But, while heartily conceding this, I rejoice yet more heartily that 
American youth are not trained to look upon the dress of a soldier as 
honorable, irrespective of the master or the cause he serves, — much 
less to look upon the mere trade of soldiering as honorable at all ; 
that to them a retrospect of battles and victories, a name in the 
army, and a memorial sword, are not held up as objects of ambition, 
the motive of life, and the solace of age. Thank God, they breathe 
another atmosphere, and have before them another standard of hero- 
ism, honor, and greatness. It is by such a standard — that of devo- 
tion to freedom, to justice, and to man — that I have attempted to 
measure Frederic, Napoleon, and Washington. What did they sev- 
erally attempt ? and with what motive ? What did they achieve ? 
and to what end ? Much as we may concede to the soldier in loyalty 
to his calling, we may not forget that Frederic and Napoleon had 
often the game of war in their own hands, could make war or peace 
at their own will ; and hence their ruling motives and aims must be 
taken into account in judging even of their military achievements. 
These last must not be suffered to overbalance those obligations of 
humanity that attend the possession of great genius and power. 

Much must be excused in Frederic because of the unhappy experi- 
ences of his youth, and the complications of his political inheritance. 
It is a marvel these had not suppressed all the tenderness and mag- 



154 CENTENNIAL OF AMEKICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

nanimity that were in his nature. His official utterances on coming 
to the throne were, no doubt, sincere intentions, formed before the 
actual experience of power : " Our grand care will be to further the 
country's well-being, and to make every one of our subjects con- 
tented and happy. . . . My will henceforth is, if it ever chance that 
my particular interest and the general good of my countries should 
seem to go against each other, in that case my will is that the latter 
always be preferred." This was honest and noble. But, as he went 
on in life, Frederic avoided any such collision by the simple expedient 
of making the good of his country identical with his own will, him- 
self being supreme actor and judge. I have said that his personality 
was an intensified patriotism; but, mutatis mutand is, his patriotism 
could also be an exaggerated selfhood. Frederic performed prodi- 
gies for Prussia ; yet some of her own historians — and perhaps his 
lloyal Highness the Crown Prince inclines to their view — are of 
opinion, that, under the peculiar difficulties of his position, the Great 
Elector showed even more of military genius and administrative 
capacity. Frederic put his own stirring impulses into every thing he 
touched, — into laws, trade, letters, arts, as well as arms. He was 
indeed the soul of the nation that he filled with a life so grand, so 
potent, and so lustrous. 

His famous secret instructions of Jan. 10, 1757, to Count Finck, 
bring into fine relief Frederic's self-sacrifice for his country, and may 
offset a good deal of personal vanity : " If I should have the fatality 
to be taken prisoner by the enemy, I prohibit all of you from paying 
the least regard to my person, or taking the least heed of what I 
might write from my place of detention. Should such misfortune 
happen me, I wish to sacrifice myself for the State ; and you must 
obey my brother, who, as well as all my ministers and generals, shall 
answer to me with their heads not to offer any province or any ran- 
som for me, but to continue the war, pushing their advantages, as if 
I never had existed in the world." This, again, is both frank and 
fine. But, when we apply to Frederic the touchstone of an unselfish 
devotion to freedom and to man, he fails where Washington stands ; 
and, without depreciating Frederic, I have simply shown that Wash- 
ington attained to a higher standard in nobleness of character, and 
greatness of achievement. Those who prefer the rose-colored view 
of Frederic will find this at its best in J\Lr. Bancroft's tenth volume, 1 
and at high-flown intensity in Carlyle's "History of Frederic the 
Second." In corroboration of the view taken in the Lecture, and 
indeed going quite beyond it, I here quote a few lines from a critic, 
who in keenness of insight, and calmness of judgment, is unsurpassed, 
— Mr. James Russell Lowell : — 

" Friedrich was doubtless a remarkable man, but surely very far 
below any lofty standard of heroic greatness. He was the last of 
the European kings who could look upon his kingdom as his private 
patrimony; and it was this estate of his, this piece of property, 
which he so obstinately and successfully defended. He had no idea 
of country as it was understood by an ancient Greek or lloman, as it 

i Chap. iii. p. 97 seq. 



NOTE ON FREDERIC AND NAPOLEON. 155 

is understood by a modern Englishman or American. . . . We doubt 
if Friedrich would have been liked as a private person, or even as an 
unsuccessful king. He apparently attached very few people to him- 
self, — fewer even than his brutal old Squire Western of a father. . . . 
In spite of Mr. Carlyle's adroit statement of the case, we feel that 
his hero was essentially hard, narrow, and selfish. . . . The kingship 
that was in him, and which won Mr. Carlyle to be his biographer, is 
that of will merely, of rapid and relentless command." Without 
indorsing this to the full, let me earnestly recommend all who have 
waded through Carlyle's " Frederic " to read Lowell's critique in his 
" Study Windows." 

Napoleon, like Frederic, had in his youth some noble sentiments 
of freedom, progress, and universal good-will ; but like Frederic, too, 
he was not principled enough in his higher nature to withstand the 
lust of domination. In his moody complaints to his brother Joseph, 
when his mind had been poisoned with suspicions of Josephine, 
Napoleon touched bottom in his own soul. " I am tired of human 
nature. I want solitude and isolation. Greatness fatigues me : 
feeling is dried up. At twenty-nine, glory has become flat. I have 
exhausted every thing. I have no refuge but pure selfishness." 1 
This "refuge" of despondency becomes his tower of strength in 
supremacy. Seven years later he could write, "My people will 
always be of one opinion when it knows that / am pleased, because 
that proves that its interests have been protected." 2 "I take the 
greatest interest in your prosperity, and particularly in your glory. 
In your position, it is the first of wants : without it, life can have no 
charm." 3 " If you do not begin [as King of Italy] by making your- 
self feared, you will suffer for it." 4 " There is nothing sacred after a 
conquest." 5 "I hope, that, by setting to work earnestly to form a 
good army and fleet, you will assist me to become master of the 
Mediterranean, which is the chief and perpetual aim of my policy. 
... I would rather have ten years of war than allow your kingdom 
to remain incomplete, and Sicily in dispute." 6 "To die is not your 
business, but to live and to conquer. I shall find in Spain the pillars 
of Hercules, but not the limits of my power." 7 

Just now, Europe is filled with indignation at the outrages commit- 
ted in Bulgaria by the Turkish army. Seventy years ago, Napoleon, 
as the conqueror of Italy, had forced upon the people of Naples his 
brother Joseph as king, much as Louis Napoleon attempted to force 
Maximilian upon the Mexicans. Neapolitans who resisted this for- 
eign king, upheld by a foreign army, were denounced by Napoleon as 
rebels ; and here are the measures he urged upon his mild and 
humane brother: "I am glad to see that a village of the insurgents 
has been burnt. Severe examples are necessary. I presume that the 
soldiers have been allowed to plunder this village. This is the way 
to treat villages which revolt." 8 "I am impatient to hear that you 
have occupied Cassano. Besides this, you should order two or three 

1 Letters to Joseph, July 25, 1798. 2 Ibid., Dec. 15, 1805. 

3 Ibid., Feb. 7, 1806. 4 Ibid., March 3, 1806. 

s Ibid., March 31, 1806. 6 ibid., July 21, 1806. 1 ibid., July 31, 1808. 
8 Ibid., April 21, 1806. 



156 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

of the large villages that have behaved the worst to be pillaged: it 
•will be an example, and will restore the gayety, and the desire for 
action, of your soldiers." 1 " Let the houses of thirty of the principal 
heads of villages be burnt, and distribute their property among the 
troops. Disarm all the inhabitants, and pillage five or six of the 
large villages which have behaved worst." 2 "I am waiting to hear 
how many estates you have confiscated in Calabria, and how many 
rebels you have executed. You should shoot in every village three of 
the ringleaders. Do not spare the priests more than others." 3 "I 
should like very much to hear of a revoft of the Neapolitan populace. 
You will never be their master till you have made an example of 
them." 4 To Joseph as King of Spain : " You must hang at Madrid a 
score of the worst characters. To-morrow I intend to have hanged 
here [Valladolid] seven notorious for their excesses. ... I have 
arrested here fifteen of the worst characters, and have ordered them to 
be shot." 5 " When a general has occasion to speak of his strength, 
he ought to render it formidable by exaggeration, doubling or tre- 
bling his numbers." 6 

It would not be fair, indeed, to judge Napoleon at the beginning of 
the century by the mitigated rules of warfare that prevail toward it3 
close. But neither should we forget that he issued these relentless 
orders against peoples whose countries he had overrun and subjugat- 
ed, and upon whom he had imposed rulers and laws alien to their 
soil and institutions ; that he, more than any man of his time, had it 
in his power to mitigate the cruelties of war, yet he urgently ordered 
the burning and pillaging of villages, which the Turks are condemned 
for not repressing. Nowhere is the marvellous military and adminis- 
trative capacity of Napoleon seen to such advantage as in his confi- 
dential correspondence with his brother Joseph ; yet in these intimate 
communications one reads also his moral weakness and the secret of 
his failure. That gentle, humane, wise, and loving brother read him 
truly, and counselled him aright. As the signs of re-action appeared, 
Joseph wrote, " I weep over the gradual diminution of an immense 
glory, which would have been better preserved by generosity and 
heroism than by any extension of power." 7 And, as the fatal hour 
drew near, Joseph pointed out how Napoleon could yet re-assure 
France : " If you will make a lasting peace with Europe, and if, 
returning to your natural kindness, and renouncing your assumed 
character and your perpetual efforts, you will at last consent to re- 
linquish the part of the wonderful man for that of the great sover- 
eign." 8 Then comes the proud answer : " As long as I live, I will 
be master everywhere in France. Your character is opposed to mine. 
You like to flatter people, and to yield to their wishes : I like them to 
try to please me, and to obey my wishes. I am as much a sovereign 
now as I was at Austerlitz. . . . There is some difference between 
the time of Lafayette, when the people ruled, and the present time, 
when I rule." 9 A month later he had signed his abdication. 10 

i Letters to Joseph, July 30, 1806. 2 Ibid., July 13, 1806. 

3 Ibid., Aug 6., 1806. 4 Ibid., Aug. 17, 1806. 

6 Ibid., Jau. 10 and 12, 1809. 6 Ibid., Oct. 10, 1800. 

7 Aug. 8, 1810. 8 March 9, 1814. 9 March 11, 1814. i° April 18 



NOTE ON FKEDERIC AND NAPOLEON. 157 

Mons. Thiers has given us the term by which to characterize Napo- 
leon, — "moral intemperance." The French use this term for any 
excess, or want of regulation; as, for instance, intemperance of study, 
learning, &c. ; just as Festus said to Paul, " Much learning hath made 
thee mad." "Politics," says Thiers, "is character much more than 
mind; and it was just there that Napoleon failed. Intemperance 
is the essential trait of his career." "Prodige de genie et de passion, 
jete dans le chaos d'une revolution, il s'y deploie, s'y developpe, la 
domine, se substitue a elle et en prend l'energie, l'audace, l'inconti- 
nence." 1 Napoleon lacked the regulative power of deep moral con- 
victions : the elements of his nature, that, in due restraint, would 
have made him unexceptionably great, drove him to intemperance of 
ambition, of self-will, of egoism. 

Where Napoleon failed, Washington stands pre-eminent. His 
strength was in self -regulation, in moral equipoise. I confess I was 
long in searching after the secret of his greatness ; and it was not till 
I went through the patient task of reading his voluminous correspond- 
ence that I found it, and found it here, — in his equilibrium of 
mind and of character; political wisdom, the result of profound 
reflection, expressed in terms of plain common sense ; moral rectitude, 
undeviating in thought, motive, or action ; devotion to country and 
mankind, in which the consideration of personal interests never 
appears, except in the form of a personal sacrifice for the common 
good. In the darkest hour of the Revolution he said, " I see my 
duty, — that of standing up for the liberties of my country ; and, what- 
ever difficulties and discouragements lie in my way, I dare not shrink 
from it ; and I rely on that Being who has not left to us the choice of 
duties, that, whilst I shall conscientiously discharge mine, I shall not 
finally lose my reward." 2 

The honor of the " Farewell Address " has been claimed for 
Hamilton ; but the draught in Washington's handwriting, in the 
Lenox Library, New York, shows that, however Hamilton may have 
assisted in the work by suggestion and revision, the conception and 
execution of the address are Washington's own. Nearly every great 
mind has some supreme moment in which it surpasses itself. Jeffer- 
son never wrote another paragraph that would compare with the 
opening of the Declaration of Independence. The solemn intensity 
of feeling at his retirement compressed the whole nature of Washing- 

1 Histoire du Consulat et 1' Empire, tome xx. p. 718. 

2 A striking and trustworthy testimony to Washington as a general is 
given by Gen. De Kalb in Ins letters to the Comte de Broglie. At first 
he mistook Washington's modesty for timidity, his reserve for vanity, his 
reticence in councils for lack of independent judgment. Hence De Kalb 
criticised his new commander as "too indolent, too slow, far too weak," 
and "too easily led." By and by he recognized in Washington " the best 
intentions and a sound judgment." Later on he saw that Washington 
"did more every day than could be expected from any general in the 
world in the same circumstances." He then wrote to De Broglie, "I 
think him [Washington] the only proper person, ... by his natural and 
acquired capacity, his bravery, good sense, uprightness, and honesty, to 
keep up the spirits of the army and people." — ISee Kapp's Life of Kalb, 
and Greece's Notice in Atlantic Monthly for October, 1875. 



158 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

ton into this supreme moment, and showed him to the world a phi- 
losopher and statesman of the highest wisdom and virtue. 

There is a popular tradition that Frederic the Great sent a sword, 
or his own portrait, to Washington, with the message, " From the 
oldest general to the greatest." The story, however, seems to have 
no evidential authority; and Mr. Bancroft, who had access to the 
unpublished correspondence of Frederic, says, "I sought for some 
expression, on the part of Frederic, of a personal interest in Wash- 
ington ; but I found none." * But in Washington we see the nobility 
of manhood that could not be ennobled by the gifts of kings. 

1 One cannot attach any great importance to the Correspondance secrete 
et inedite sur Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, &e. ; but I give here the 
passages cited by Mr. Bigelow in his Life of Franklin (ii. 3<)4) : "In a 
letter which the King of Prussia has written to one of his literary corre- 
spondents in Paris, this passage occurs: 'I send you my secret against 
hydrophobia. It should be administered to the British Parliament, which 
acts like an infuriated fool in the American business. I have the abiding 
hope that you will don your cuirass against this God don; that you will 
aid the Colonies to become free, and retake Canada, which they so wrong- 
fully took from you. It is the wish of my heart, and it should" be also the 
dictate of policy' (Nov. 3, 1777). Again: Nov. 17, the king to D'Alcmbert, 
'I like these brave fellows, and cannot help secretly 'hoping for their 
success.' " 



LECTURE IV. 

THE NATION TESTED BY THE VICISSITUDES OF A CEN- 
TURY. 

THE government of the United States is no longer an 
experiment ; nor is the nation on probation. That 
the government shall fall, or give place to other forms ; 
that the nation shall decline, and linger on in slow decay, 
or give place to some fresher stock and another type of 
civilization, — all this may be written in the Book of 
Fate. But this would only repeat the lesson of history, — 
that the permanence of no civilization and of no people is 
guaranteed, either by political forms, by social institutions, 
or by conditions of race and territory. Unless there be 
in the people a spiritual and moral life, working in and 
through their economic forms toward ever higher and 
nobler ends, and making the strength of justice and peace 
their safeguard against outward invasion, then nothing 
can keep a nation hale with the growth of centuries. 

Who can read without a touch of melancholy the clos- 
ing paragraph of Mommsen's " History of Rome " ? — " We 
have reached the end of the Roman Republic. We have 
seen it rule for five hundred years in Italy and in the 
countries on the Mediterranean. We have seen it brought 
to ruin in politics and morals, religion and literature, not 
through outward violence, but through inward decay, and 
thereby making room for the new monarchy of Caesar. 
There was in the world as Caesar found it much of the 
noble heritage of past centuries, and an infinite abundance 
of pomp and glory, but little spirit, still less taste, and, 
least of all, true delight in life. It was indeed an old 
world; and even the richly-gifted patriotism of Caesar 

159 



160 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

could not make it young again. The dawn does not 
return till after the night has fully set in and run its 
course." Such was the fate of Rome and of Italy. To 
other nations the night has never been broken since first 
it set in ; while some are even now struggling doubtfully 
between day and night. Still the beautiful analogy of 
Mommsen must not be received as the universal law of 
history. Sometimes, at least, that which is taken for the 
setting-in of night is only the coming-on of an eclipse, 
from whose chill, ghastly, ominous shadow the sun at 
length emerges, to mount undimmed toward the zenith. 
An increase of his spots may indicate, not impending 
obscuration or destruction, but the burning-up of grosser 
matter by which he intensifies his light and heat. 

If the principle of decay is lodged in the very life of 
nations, then the American people must decline, in their 
turn ; but, so far as any prognostics can be detected in 
their organic constitution or national life, they need feel 
no alarm till they shall have advices that Macaulay's New- 
Zealander has " taken his stand on a broken arch of Lon- 
don Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's." The 
nation is not likely to die young: its Constitution has 
gone through the seasoning process, and come out with 
new vigor from every attack. Always a power of life, it 
has shown itself, in time of need, a living power. On retir- 
ing from the presidency, Washington said to his country- 
men, " This government, the offspring of our own choice, 
uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation 
and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, 
in the distribution of its powers uniting security with 
energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own 
amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your 
support." To-day a leading organ of opinion in England 
pronounces the Constitution of the United States "the 
most sacred political document in the whole world." * 

The government that Washington commended as " well 
worth a fair and full experiment " has taken its place in 
the halls of political science as an authoritative example, 
has taken its seat in the high court of nations as a co-ordi- 
nate power. It no longer asks philosophers to stand by 

1 See leading editorial of the London Times, Dec. 9, 1873. 



THE NATION TESTED. 161 

and see how it shall work ; it no longer asks the govern- 
ments of the Old World to be considerate of its youth, and 
grant it a probationary place in their councils. In its Con- 
stitution it has given to philosophers the most important 
contribution of modern times to the science of govern- 
ment : by that Constitution it tests all other governments, 
however ancient and revered, and, in virtue of this organ- 
ized nationality, sits among the nations an arbiter and a 
judge by the same right that they claim for themselves. 1 
The United States are not making an experiment in gov- 
ernment for mankind to judge of: they are not on trial, 
and need no plea. They have accomplished a fact in gov- 
ernment that now belongs to the science and history of 
the world. Though the Constitution of the United States 
is only eighty-five years old, its spirit is as old as the 
settlement of the country more than two hundred and 
sixty years ago. It was the consummate flower of a politi- 
cal society, that, drawing the sap of liberty from the best 
stock of Europe, had grown with the vigor of a new soil 
for nearly two centuries. Therefore it is impossible to 
separate the Constitution from the life of the nation, or 
this from the nations and ages that had gone before. The 
framers of the Constitution, indeed, did not consider their 
work perfect, since they incorporated with the instrument 
a provision for amending it ; and the people of the United 
States have shown that they do not worship a bit of parch- 
ment, since they have amended their Constitution more 
than once, and are likely to amend it again. This Consti- 
tution might not be exactly fitted to any other nation, nor 
any other nation exactly fitted for such a government ; for 
the government of a people must grow out of their condi- 
tions of race, territory, temperament, education, society, 
development. But, aftec all these qualifications and 
abatements, it remains true, that in reconciling liberty 
with order, individual well-being with the public good, 
local independence with collective power, the separate 
responsibility of the parts of government with the joint 
efficiency of the whole, the Constitution of the United 
States providing a government by the people, of the peo- 
ple, for the people, is the great contribution of modern 

1 See note at the end of the Lecture. 



1(32 CENTENNIAL OF AMEBIC AN INDEPENDENCE. 

times to the science of government, and " the most sacred 
political document in the whole world." 

Theoretically the Constitution speaks for itself, and is 
for the discussions of schools of political ethics ; but it is 
not too soon to speak of the Constitution practically in 
these terms of confidence. Trial is no less a test of sta- 
bility than time. The government of the United States 
has been tested by every form of mischief and peril that 
could threaten its existence. Measured by events, it has 
gone through a vast cycle of national experiences. It is 
my purpose, in this Lecture, to set in array these vicissi- 
tudes of the republic, and leave the facts to answer the 
predictions of its enemies, and allay the fears of its friends. 

We are told that party-spirit will prove our ruin; that 
the strife of factions, which wrought such mischief in 
Greece and Rome, in the Italian republics of the middle 
ages, in the French republic, is intensified in the United 
States by the license of the press, by the personalities of 
political campaigns, and by the spoils of office held up as 
a prize to the winning party ; and that this strife must 
lead at length to blows, to usurpation, or the despotism of 
a mob. Washington warned his countrymen " in the 
most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the 
spirit of party," as the " worst enemy" of popular gov- 
ernments. " A fire not to be quenched, it demands a 
uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lost, 
instead of warming, it should consume." ! 

Were we wholly without experience, the occasional 
violence of party-spirit and the indecencies of the politi- 
cal press might alarm us for the peace of the country and 
the preservation of public morals. Whatever our party 
affinities, or our personal feelings towards a particular 
President, who can read without a feeling of humiliation 
and disgust such language as this spoken of any incum- 
bent of that high office? — "In all this affair the language 
of the President has been that of a heartless despot, sole- 
ly occupied with the preservation of his own authority. 
Ambition is his crime, and it will be his punishment too. 
Intrigue is his native element ; and intrigue will confound 
his tricks, and deprive him of his power. He governs by 

1 Farewell Address. 



THE XATIOX TESTED. 1(33 

means of corruption; and his immoral practices will re- 
dound to his shame and confusion. His conduct in the 
political arena has been that of a shameless and lawless 
gamester. He succeeded at the time : but the hour of 
retribution approaches, and he will be obliged to disgorge 
his winnings, to throw aside his false dice, and to end his 
days in some retirement, where he may curse his madness 
at his leisure ; for repentance is a virtue with which his 
heart is likely to remain forever unacquainted." x Now, do 
not mistake this for a philippic against " Ccesarism," 
under spasms of angina pectoris. It was delivered against 
Andrew Jackson. De Tocqueville quotes it as the first 
specimen of the American press that met his eyes on land- 
ing in New York in 1831 : so the nation has survived that 
outburst for nearly half a century. 

Did ever party-spirit run higher than at the first elec- 
tion of Jackson, and during his controversy with the Bank 
of the United States ? Yet what does the present genera- 
tion know or care about it all ? And what shall we say of 
an open proposal to go to the seat of government, and 
drag the President from his chair? Did not such violence 
of party-zeal threaten the overthrow of the Constitution 
and the Union ? But this was not a conspiracy to kidnap 
Mr. Lincoln in time of war: it was the talk of "solid men 
of Boston" against John Adams; and the nation has sur- 
vived it seventy-five years 

In December, 1875, the House of Representatives passed 
a vote against a third term of the presidential office, — a 
topic that has been discussed in the newspapers in no 
measured words. One or two specimens of the language 
which the notion of a third candidacy has called forth are 
worth quoting here. " The President is totally destitute 
of merit, either as a soldier or a statesman : he has 
violated the Constitution, and perverted his office to his 
private use." " The remaining of no man in office is 
necessary to the success of the government. The people 
would be in a calamitous situation if one man were essen- 
tial to the existence of the government. May the Presi- 
dent be happy in his retirement ! but let him retire." But 
this was said of George Washington when he insisted on 

1 Democracy in America, i. 233, Bowen's edition. 



104 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

retiring, and Congress proposed resolutions of regret at Ills 
withdrawal from public life, and of thanks and admira- 
tion for his eminent services. 1 

John Adams has left it on record, that in 1793, when 
Genet sought to coerce the government into a league with 
France, " thousands of people in the streets of Philadel- 
phia, day after day, threatened to drag Washington out of 
his house, and effect a revolution in the government, or 
compel it to declare war in favor of the French Revolution, 
and against England." 2 And of a like incident to himself 
he says, " Ten thousand people, and perhaps many more, 
were parading the streets of Philadelphia on the evening 
of my Fast Day, when even Gov. Mifflin thought it 
his duty to order a patrol of horse and foot to preserve 
the peace ; when Market Street was as full of men as 
could stand by one another, and even before my door ; 
when some of my domestics, in frenzy, determined to 
sacrifice their lives in my defence; when all were ready to 
make a desperate sally among the multitude, and some 
were with difficulty and danger dragged back by the 
others; when I myself judged it prudent and necessary to 
order chests of arms from the War Office to be brought 
through by lanes and back-doors, determined to defend 
my house at the expense of my life, and the lives of the 
few, very few domestics and friends within it. " 3 All 
that was nearly eighty years ago ; and who fears to-day that 
the National Government will be dethroned by a mob? 
The Constitution has long lived down that sort of party 
frenzy. 

Never did the spirit of party rage more furiously than 
in the contest for the presidency between Adams and 
Jefferson. The latter as the leader of the Democracy, 
and supposed to be in sympathy with French ideas, was 
looked upon by Federalists as the incarnation of evil. 
One New-England minister refused to baptize a child 
Thomas Jefferson, saying he would rather call it Beelze- 
bub. Another lifted up his dying head to say, " I die lov- 
ing the Lord Jesus Christ, and hating the Devil and Tom 
Jefferson." The contest sowed enmity between those two 

i Irving's Life of Washington, v. 241. 2fi0. 

2 Letter to Jefferson: Jefferson's Works, vol. vi. 155. 3 Ibid. 



THE NATION TESTED. 165 

noble patriots. But years after we find them solacing 
each other in old age with a correspondence of tender 
friendship. In one of these letters, Jefferson alludes to 
that day of strife in these words : " Here you and I sepa- 
rated for the first time. . . . We suffered ourselves to be 
passive subjects of public discussion ; and those discus- 
sions, whether relating to men, measures, or opinions, were 
conducted by the parties with an animosity, a bitterness, 
and an indecency, which had never been exceeded. All 
the resources of reason and of wrath were exhausted by 
each party in support of its own, and to prostrate the 
adversary opinions. ... I have no stomach to revive the 
memory of that day. . . . No circumstances have sus- 
pended for one moment my sincere esteem for you, and I 
now salute you with unchanged affection and respect." 1 
There is no lasting peril in parties whose leaders end in 
cuddling one another for the tomb. The nation has sur- 
vived all the turmoils of Adams and Jefferson, and can do 
honor to each without jealousy of the other. No, no ! it 
is not in party-spirit that the doom or disruption of the 
country lies. Parties are so nearly balanced as to be 
always a mutual check : they are so parcelled out among 
districts, counties, states, and so restrained by the elec- 
tive apparatus for the senate and the presidency, that 
their majorities in one quarter may be neutralized in 
another. They cannot centralize ; and, there being no 
army to be bought or used, they cannot terrorize. No 
mob can rush in upon the government with shouts of " Le 
decheance ! " No Monk can bring his hired soldiery to over- 
awe or disperse the Parliament. 

On the matter of party-spirit the anxious American 
may re-assure himself from the experience of countries 
other than his own. The German Reichstag is a creation 
of yesterday. Its members are hardly out of leading- 
strings. But what scenes of turbulence have already been 
witnessed there under the combined assault of Ultramon- 
tranes and the Fortschritts party upon Prince Bismarck's 
policy ! What a spectacle is a party-bout in the French 
Chamber of Deputies ! As to party-spirit in England, we 
have a telling witness in Lord Macaulay. 

1 Jefferson's Works, voL vi. 37, 1M. 



1(36 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

On the 13th September, 1831, Macaulay wrote to his sis- 
ter, " The aspect of public affairs is very menacing; fearful, 
I think, beyond what people in general imagine. Three 
weeks, however, will probably settle the whole, and bring 
to an issue the question, — reform, or revolution. One or 
the other I am certain that we must and shall have. I 
assure you that the violence of the people, the bigotry of 
the lords, and the stupidity and weakness of the ministers, 
alarm me so much, that even mj rest is disturbed by vexa- 
tion and uneasy forebodings, not for myself, — fori may 
gain, and cannot lose, — but for this noble country, which 
seems likely to be ruined without the miserable consola- 
tion of being ruined by great men. ... I know the dan- 
ger from information more accurate and certain than, I 
believe, anybody not in power possesses ; and I perceive, 
what our men in power do not perceive, how terrible the 
danger is." l 

In 1833 Macaulay had another scare about the Irish 
Church Bill, the stubbornness of the peers, and the vacil- 
lations of the king. On the 27th of June he wrote again 
to his sister, " I see nothing before us but a frantic con- 
flict between extreme opinions ; a short period of oppres- 
sion, then a convulsive re-action, and then a tremendous 
crash of the funds, the church, the peerage, and the 
throne. It is enough to make the most strenuous royal- 
ist lean a little to republicanism to think that the whole 
question between safety and general destruction may 
probably, at this most fearful conjuncture, depend on a 
single man whom the accident of his birth has placed in a 
situation to which certainly his own virtues or abilities 
would never have raised him." 2 

Everybody says that Macaulay must have had " a bee 
in his bonnet " when he wrote such stuff as this. But its 
publication just now is timely as a warning to other 
prophets of evil. Macaulay was a student of history, a 
statesman of experience, a man of candid judgment, and a 
good knowledge of society and of human nature ; yet, in 
the heat of controversy, every passing political excitement 
assumed the proportions of a revolution, convulsing society, 
and overturning the fundamental order of the state. Just 

1 Life and Letters, chap. iv. 2 Ibid., chap. v. 



THE NATION TESTED. 167 

tliis mistake is constantly made by English critics of 
American politics. It is well to remember that many an 
alarming telegraphic report and ominous leader in the 
morning journal is written, as were these letters of Macau- 
lay, in the small hours, after an exciting debate and ex- 
hausting session, when the tired brain sees spectres while 
the rest of the world is quietly and safely asleep. 

What little there was of reason in Macaulay's apprehen- 
sions goes to show that party-violence is not a special prod- 
uct nor peril of republican institutions, and that its 
remedy does not lie in relapsing to a monarchy and a 
House of Lords. Macaulay, even, sighed for relief from 
both, and boldly predicted the exchange of the House of 
Peers for an " Upper Chamber on an elective basis." l 
Mr. Trevelyan testifies, that, in 1839, " public animosity 
and personal violence had risen to a higher, or, at any 
rate, to a more sustained temperature than had ever been 
reached since the period when, amidst threats of impeach- 
ment, and accusations of treason, perfidy, and corruption, 
Sir Robert Walpole was tottering to his fall." 

How hot the temperature of that partisan conflict real- 
ly was, we know from Macaulay's journal : " Thursday, 
June 11, 1840. I went from the office to the House, 
which was engaged upon Stanley's Irish Registration Bill. 
The night was very stormy. I have never seen such un- 
seemly demeanor, or heard such scurrilous language, in 
Parliament. Lord Norreys was whistling, and making all 
sorts of noises. Lord Maidstone was so ill-mannered, that 
I hope he was drunk. At last, after much grossly inde- 
cent conduct, at which Lord Eliot expressed his disgust 
to me, a furious outbreak took place. O'Connell was so 
rudely interrupted, that he used the expression, ' beastly 
bellowings.' Then rose such an uproar as no O. P. mob at 
Covent-Garden Theatre, no crowd of Chartists in front of 
a hustings, ever equalled. Men on both sides stood up, 
shook their fists, and bawled at the top of their voices. 
Freshfleld, who was in the chair, was strangely out of his 
element. Indeed, he knew his business so little, that, 
when first he had to put a question, he fancied himself at 
Exeter Hall, or the Crown and Anchor, and said, 4 As 

1 Life and Letters, chap. viii. 



168 CENTENNIAL OF AMEBIC AN INDEPENDENCE. 

many as are of that opinion, please to signify the same by 
holding up their hands.' He was quite unable to keep the 
smallest order when the storm came. O'Connell raged like 
a mad bull; and our people, I for one, while regretting and 
condemning his violence, thought it much extenuated by 
the provocation. ... At last the tumult ended from 
absolute physical weariness. It was past one; and the 
steady bellowers of the opposition had been howling from 
six o'clock with little interruption." 1 Never was there a 
more disgraceful scene in the American Congress than this 
"bear-garden " performance of British aristocracy and con- 
servatism. Yet the British Constitution survived it ; and 
he would be a sorry critic who should judge the institu- 
tions and the people of Great Britain by such an outbreak 
of party-violence. At that day, " The London Times " was 
as vituperative and personal as was " The New- York Her- 
ald " of the same period. Macaulay was then the foremost 
of English essayists, the most brilliant of parliamentary 
orators; yet " The Times," in -its leading articles, styled 
him " Mr. Babble-tongue Macaulay," an epithet, which, like 
Thackeray's " Right Honorable T. B. Maconkey," marks 
an average level of English journalistic humor. And, 
when Macaulay and Sheil were sworn of the privy coun- 
cil, "The Times" exclaimed, "These men privy council- 
lors ! These men petted at Windsor Castle ! Faugh ! 
Why, they are hardly fit to fill up the vacancies that have 
occurred by the lamented death of her Majesty's two fa- 
vorite monkeys." 2 

This was no exceptional instance. Such political ameni- 
ties were too much the manner of that time. On the 1st 
of October, 1832, Mr. Disraeli issued an address to the 
electors of Wycombe, in which he characterized the min- 
istry in the following terms : — 

"And now I call upon every man who values the independence of 
our borough, upon every man who desires the good government of 
this once great and happy country, to support me in this struggle 
against that rapacious, tyrannical, and incapable faction, who. having 
knavishly obtained power by false pretences, sillily suppose that they 
will be permitted to retain it by half-measures, and who, in the 
course of their brief but disastrous career, have contrived to shake 
every great interest of the empire to its centre." 

1 Life and Letters of Macaulay, chap. viii. 2 Ibid. 



THE NATION TESTED. 169 

If this might be pardoned to the ambitious rhetoric of 
a young politician, what shall be said of the following 
extract from a letter of Mr. Disraeli in reply to " The 
Globe," published in " The Times " of the 9th of January, 
1836? — 

" Like the man who left off fighting because he could not keep his 
wife from supper, the editor of ' The Globe ' has been pleased to say 
that he is disinclined to continue this controversy because it gratifies 
my 'passion for notoriety.' The editor of 'The Globe' must have a 
more contracted mind and a paltrier spirit than even I imagined, if 
he can suppose for a moment that an ignoble controversy with an 
obscure animal like himself can gratify the passion for notoriety of one 
whose works at least have been translated into the languages of pol- 
ished Europe, and circulate by thousands in the New World. It is not, 
then, my passion for notoriety that has induced me to tweak the editor 
of ' The Globe ' by the nose, and to inflict sundry kicks upon the baser 
part of his base body ; to make him eat dirt, and his own words, fouler 
than any filth ; but because I wished to show to the world what a mis- 
erable poltroon, what a craven dullard, what a literary scarecrow, what 
a mere thing stuffed with straw and rubbish, is the soi-disant director 
of public opinion, and official organ of Whig politics." 1 

If a man addicted to such language could rise to the 
highest honors of statesmanship that the British Empire 
has to offer, there may be hope yet for Dr. Kenealy. It 
does not matter that all this was forty years ago. I grant 
that English manners have improved; but my point is, 
that political blackguardism is not a peculiarity of democ- 
racy, and that the remedy for this scandal of free society 
does not lie in creating peers. Party-spirit, with even 
violent indecencies of parliament and press, is not a spe- 
cial product nor a special peril of republican institutions. 
Liberty, indeed, may give exceptional facilities to the spirit 
of party ; but we do well to keep in mind the words 
spoken by John Adams on the eve of the Declaration of 
Independence : "I do not expect that our new government 
will be so quiet as I could wish, nor that happy harmony, 
confidence, and affection between the Colonies, that every 
good American ought to study, labor, and pray for, for a 
long time. But freedom is a counterbalance for poverty, 
discord, and war, and more." 2 

1 For more in this style, see Gentleman's Magazine for December, 1876, 
on Lord Beaconstield. 

2 See note at close of Lecture. 



170 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

This spectre of party being laid, we are threatened with 
the ghost of sectionalism, which already, in the time of 
Washington, began to stalk abroad as another guise of 
party-spirit. He regarded it "as matter of serious con- 
cern that any ground should have been furnished for 
characterizing parties by geographical discriminations, — 
Northern and &Qiithern, Atlantic and Western ; " and the 
" Farewell Address " contains an elaborate argument upon 
the community of interest of all sections of the country, 
their commercial and political interdependence, and the 
value c£ the Union to all alike. 

In forming the Union, there were jealousies between 
New England and the South, which, however, yielded to 
the common necessity. At the moment when Washington 
entered upon his presidency, emissaries of Great Britain 
and of Spain were intriguing with political leaders at the 
West to detach the Western territory from the Union, and 
establish a separate government in the valley of the Mis- 
sissippi. This project caused no little uneasiness until the 
treaties with Great Britain and with Spain satisfied the 
people of the West that the General Government and 
the Atlantic States were in no wise unfriendly to their 
interests, and had secured to them all the rights of navi- 
gation they could desire. At the beginning of the cen- 
tury, Aaron Burr was accused of the treasonable design 
of forming a distinct empire, to be composed of Western 
States and a portion of Mexico : but the scheme, whatever 
it was, failed ignominiously ; and the purchase of Louisi- 
ana soon after bound the East, the West, and the South in 
a common destiny. From that day, the West has had her 
own outlet for her granaries to the markets of the world ; 
3~et canals and railways have made Boston, New York, 
Philadelphia, Baltimore, more necessary and valuable to 
her as marts for her produce than the Mississippi and New 
Orleans that she once coveted for her exclusive possession. 
The Hartford Convention, in opposition to the war of 
1812, 1 cannot fairly be called a sectional movement: it 
was a combined peace-and-party demonstration, that soon 
died of inanition, and in its death involved the political 
hopes of most of its members and supporters. Historians 

i The convention met in December, 1814. 



THE NATION TESTED. 171 

will agree that the convention was a mistake as a mode 
of political agitation, and that the time of holding it was 
inopportune. In the midst of a war which had never been 
popular, and was still of doubtful issue, the convention 
put forth a statement of the grievances of a portion of 
the country because of the war, and proposed certain 
changes in the Constitution. But the convention never 
approached the idea of separating New England from the 
Union. Mr. Webster, who knew well the motives and 
aims of the old Federalist party, and had studied this 
question with his usual care, in his speech in the Senate, 
in reply to Mr. Hayne of South Carolina, 1 said, " There 
never was a time, under any degree of excitement, in 
which the Hartford Convention, or any other convention, 
could have maintained itself one moment in New England, 
if assembled for any such purpose as breaking up the 
Union because they thought unconstitutional laws had 
been passed, or to consult on that subject, or to calculate 
the value of the Union." 

Just after the Hartford Convention, Jefferson wrote to 
Lafayette, " They have not been able to make themselves 
even a subject of conversation, either of public or private 
societies. . . . The yeomanry of the United States are not 
the canaille of Paris. . . . The cement of this Union is in 
the heart-blood of every American. I do not believe there 
is on earth a government established on so immovable a 
basis. Let them in any State, even in Massachusetts 
itself, raise the standard of separation, and its citizens will 
rise in mass, and do justice themselves on their own incen- 
diaries." 2 

Nothing in the geographical position nor in the histori- 
cal antecedents of any portion of the United States, nor 
any occasional grievance or injustice inflicted on a part by 
the whole, could provoke sectionalism to a degree that 
might threaten the disruption of the Union. As a rule, 
party-lines would overrun and divide all sectional barriers, 
and specific grievances would be met by political agitation 
and party combination and change. Sectionalism could 
become a power only when a section should have some cher- 

1 Jan. 26, 1830. Works, vol. iii. p. 315. 

2 Jefferson's Works, vol vi, pp. 425, 426. 



172 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

isliecl interest of its own, apart from, and perhaps alien to, 
the interest of the nation, and should set this local concern 
above all distinctions of party and all benefits of organic 
union. For a long period, the peril of sectionalism from 
such a cause was serious, and at times alarming, — a sec- 
tionalism not defined by physical geography, nor degrees of 
latitude, but by the surveyor's line of Mason and Dixon, 
and social institutions contrasted by that artificial bound- 
ary. This peril, which had aroused the country in 1820, 
and was then seemingly averted by the Missouri Com- 
promise, 1 took on the positive and formidable aspect of 
nullification in 1832, when a convention of South Carolina 
resolved to resist the collection of duties by the United- 
States Government, and, should their collection be en- 
forced, to withdraw from the Union, and organize a sepa- 
rate government. The champion of nullification was one 
of the most sincere, upright, and able statesmen the coun- 
try has produced, — a man who, given his premises, would 
hold you as in a vice by the relentless screw of his logic. 
No American can fail to accord to John C. Calhoun the 
respect due to the highest order of intellect and to perfect 
sincerity of character; but when he assumed the false 
premise, that the Constitution was not the fundamental 
and inalienable law of the nation, but a voidable compact 
of sovereign States, then the very strength of his logic, 
and the downright earnestness and sincerity of his charac- 
ter, drove him on to destroy the Union for what he believed 
to be the right of his State. The first stand was made at 
the tariff; but this point was too weak to be tenable; 
and the strong reasoning and burning eloquence of Web- 
ster in the Senate, the soldierly decision of Jackson in the 
presidency, and the spontaneous uprising of the people, 
put down nullification with the watchword, "The Union, 
it must, it shall, be preserved." In truth, with the ever- 
changing phases of agriculture, manufactures, and com- 
merce, and the mobility of political parties upon economi- 
cal questions, a tariff act of a single Congress could hardly 
form the nucleus of a sectional contest against the General 

1 By this compromise, Missouri was admitted into the Union as a slave 
State, on the pledge that slavery should be thereafter prohibited in new 
States north of 36° 30' north latitude. 



THE NATION TESTED. 173 

Government. Calhoun had the honesty to avow that the 
prime importance of his doctrine of State-rights and 
secession lay in the preservation of slavery : and that ivas 
an interest which the South had in common, to the exclu- 
sion of the rest of the Union, — an interest that entered 
into the whole constitution of society, domestic, industrial, 
political; into the personal habits of the people, their local 
laws, their ties of property, marriage, and inheritance. 
To the protection of this system Mr. Calhoun brought his 
doctrines of State-rights and secession, and devoted the 
strength and energy of his remarkable powers through 
the long period of his public career. I respect Mr. Cal- 
houn none the less, that, in the circumstances of his 
training, he was a slaveholder ; and none the less that he 
maintained with such manful persistency that state of 
society with which his own life was involved. He had 
the courage to say in the Senate, that the doctrine of 
human equality and liberty proclaimed by the Declaration 
of Independence was a grave political error ; l and that " the 
laws of the slaveholding States for the protection of their 
domestic institutions are paramount to the laws of the 
General Government in regulation of commerce and the 
mail ; that the latter must yield to the former in the event 
of conflict ; and that, if the government should refuse to 
yield, the States have a right to interpose." 2 This deter- 
mination to renounce the Union, rather than suffer slavery 
to be restricted, meddled with, or even discussed, was 
largely the burden of Calhoun's speeches for twenty years. 
He was honest, and I respect him for that ; he was consist- 
ent, and I respect him for that ; he was courageous, and 
I respect him for that ; just as I respect Pius IX. for say- 
ing " Non possumus " to every proposal that he " should 
reconcile himself to progress, liberalism, and civilization, 
as lately introduced." I find in Mr. Calhoun no tokens 
of political envy, of disappointed ambition, or of mean 
demagogism ; but his system made him sectional, dwarfed 
his vision from the grand scope of nationality, freedom, 
humanity, for which such powers as his were given, and 

1 Speecli on the Oregon Bill, June 27, 1S48: Works, iv. 50fi. 

2 Speech on Suppressing Incendiary Publications, April 12, 1836, vol. ii. 
532, 533. 



174 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

concentrated it upon one interest of his one State, — " There 
is my family and connections ; there I drew my first breath ; 
there are all my hopes." * 

The South was never sectional upon geographical or 
political grounds. Slavery, an heirloom of the civiliza- 
tion that preceded the era of independence, fostered by 
her climate and intwined with her growth, made economi- 
cally valuable through the invention of the cotton-gin, 
made politically important through the three-fifths rule 
of apportionment and the expansion of territory, — this 
gave to the South a community of interest in and for her- 
self separate from the general interests of the country, 
and made her a unit whenever that interest was endan- 
gered. It is but just to the patriotism of the South to say 
that slavery alone made her sectional, intensified her faith 
in State-rights, and drove her into the fallacy of seces- 
sion. The war of sectionalism was fought out grandly 
in the arena of argument, was fought out bravely on the 
field of battle ; and slavery, the cause of sectionalism, fell. 
What now remains ? Hostile sections, imbittered by war, 
biding their time for a new struggle for ascendency ? Let 
the reception given to the soldiers of Virginia and South 
Carolina at the celebration of Bunker Hill in June, 1875, 
answer. Let the late Vice-President of the Southern 
Confederacy answer. In his speech at Atlanta, July 4, 
1875, Mr. Alexander II. Stephens said, " The grand dem- 
onstrations in honor of the hundredth anniversary of the 
destruction of tea at Boston and Baltimore, of the battles 
of Concord, Lexington, and Bunker Hill, and of the 
Mecklenburg Declaration, which have brought the differ- 
ent sections into more harmonious accord, are but a prel- 
ude to the celebration of the anniversary of the Declara- 
tion which is to come off next year in Philadelphia. . . . 
The great cause of strife being now removed forever, why 
cannot all true friends of constitutional liberty cordially 
unite in the future for the perpetuation of the principles 
set forth in the common Declaration of Independence ? 
I insist that we of the South shall never, from any cause, 
lose our full share of the glories of the ever-memorable 
4th of July, 1776." And once more : let Gov. Kemper 

i Speech of Feb. 19, 1847 : Works, iv. 347. 



THE NATION TESTED. 175 

of Virginia answer, whose message of Dec. 1, 1875, advo- 
cates the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia in these 
patriotic and eloquent words : " The people of Virginia 
yielded as brave men to the verdict of war ; and, giving 
their parole of honor to be thenceforward faithful citizens 
of a re-united common country, they at once and cheer- 
fully accepted the results of emancipation, as well as the 
arbitrament which ended the question of peaceable secession 
forever, and made the Union constitutionally indissoluble. 
. . . The United States is our country; and it is des- 
tined to be the only country for ourselves and our chil- 
dren forever. ... It were suicidal in us to hold back 
from any effort which can conduce to the common welfare. 
. . . Let not Virginia stand aloof from this gathering 
of her sister States on the spot which gave birth to free 
government, and where her illustrious sons, a hundred 
years ago, took so grand a part in rearing the pillars of 
American liberty. Let her stand there, hand in hand with 
her sister States, around the hallowed spot, and, uniting 
with them, give her potent aid in laying deep and strong 
the foundations of a reconstructed Union, made perpetual 
by good-will, equal laws, equal rights, and equal liberties 
for all." 

Since sectionalism as between the North and the South 
was abnormal, and the cause of that old unnatural strife 
is forever removed, where shall one find on the map of 
the United States, geographical or political, a basis or 
suggestion of sectional division ? Nature has provided no 
line of territorial division from east to west. No Alps 
there lift their everlasting barriers; no Mississippi rolls 
eastward from the Rocky Mountains to the Alantic coast. 
The basin of the Mississippi, notwithstanding its enor- 
mous dimensions, is marked by Nature for the home of a 
people having community of interests, and identity of 
aims. From the westward watershed of Pennsylvania to 
the eastward watershed of Colorado, the central river 
drains into itself the entire circulation of the basin; and 
the farmers and miners of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, 
Wisconsin, Minnesota, Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Ne- 
braska, Colorado, Kansas, have a property in the free out- 
let of the Mississippi as vital as the planters and graziers 



176 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

of Arkansas and the merchants of St. Lonis and New 
Orleans. As to the East and the "West, nowhere does the 
Appalachian range rise to such a height, nor in a line so 
bold, as to form a sharply-defined barrier ; and its own 
streams and passes have long been utilized for canals and 
railways binding the Mississippi basin to the Atlantic 
slope. 

The Rocky Mountains might indeed serve for a physi- 
cal boundary between separate nations ; but the material 
products and wants of the regions upon either side require 
that these should supplement each other, and this natural 
interdependence of the parts argues the predestined unity 
of the whole. Though California and Oregon possess 
magnificent harbors of their own, lying open to the com- 
merce of Japan, China, aad the Indies, the railway has 
subsidized the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to combine the 
traffic of New York and San Francisco for the enrichment 
of both. How much of the bullion of the Pacific coast 
finds its way into the exchange of the world through the 
commerce of the Atlantic coast ! The streams of New 
England turn the seven million spindles that weave the 
cotton of the South and the wool of the West ; and even 
the granite and ice of her inhospitable climate provide for 
the wants and comforts of New Orleans and Mobile. The 
cotton and sugar crops of the South, in turn, find vent 
largely through the markets and ports of the North; while 
the vast grain, pork, and beef supplies of the basin of the 
Mississippi, which would impoverish the country through 
an embarras de richesses were not the glut relieved by 
eastern outlets, find a ready exchange for the fish and 
manufactures of the Atlantic slope, and for the imports 
of its world-wide commerce. Thus the varieties of soil, 
climafe, and production, in ceaseless exchange, the more 
than three million tonnage employed yearly in the coast- 
ing trade, the fifty thousand miles of railway and sixty 
thousand of telegraph-wires traversing the continent, 
show how close and constant, how universal and minute, 
is the industrial circulation of the national life ; the vast 
trains of freight-wagons on the Pacific Railway, marked 
" New York, Chicago, San Francisco," denote the unity 
of interests in the Atlantic and Pacific slopes and the 



THE NATION TESTED. 177 

Mississippi basin ; the trend of the two great coasts points 
to the unity of a nation that should possess the northern 
continent; and, while the physical conformation of the 
country protests against disruption, the principle of local 
self-government is the efficient counterpoise to centraliza- 
tion : Unit as in libertate et libertas in imitate. 

This last sentence anticipates and refutes another 
prophecy of danger to the American Union. It is pro- 
nounced impossible that a republican government should 
maintain its unity over so vast a territory and such a mul- 
titudinous population as will occupy that territory in the 
next hundred years. History warns us of the perils of 
territorial expansion to the organic unity of the State. 
Of the attempt of Rome to rule the Romano-Hellenic 
world, stretching from the Tagus and the Ragraclas to the 
Nile and the Euphrates, Mommsen observes, " The govern- 
ment of the world, difficult in the attainment, was still 
more difficult in the preservation : the Roman Senate had 
mastered the former task ; but it broke down under the 
latter." l And it was true also of the Roman Empire, 
that the weight of the branches broke the tree. Other 
empires of conquest have followed the same fate, and we 
are witnesses to-day of the impending dissolution of the 
Turkish Empire. During the Mexican war, Mr. Webster, 
in the Senate, said, " I am against all accessions of terri- 
tory to form new States ; " 2 and pointed out the dangers 
of annexation to the Constitution and the Union. But 
the clangers he apprehended are over. Westward we have 
reached the Pacific : we have no hankering for Canada, 
and she no yearning toward us : in the death of slavery 
expired the desire of annexing Mexico and Cuba: the 
suggestion of an interference by the United-States Govern- 
ment in the affairs of either excites no popular enthusi- 
asm; and no party could ride into power to-day by a 
war-cry of annexation or " manifest destiny." 

If there is danger to the Union from extent of territory, 
and increase of population, this is a danger that the gov- 
ernment of the United States shares with most of the 
great nations of the future, — Russia with her almost 

1 History of Rome, book iv. chap. 1. 

2 Speech of 2d February, 1848 : Works, vol. v. 280. 



178 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

yearly accessions of territory in Asia ; Germany with her 
union of kingdoms and duchies, and her annexation of 
Posen, Schleswig-Holstein, and Elsass-Lothringen ; Eng- 
land with her vast colonies and dependencies, and yet 
possible conquests and protectorates; Austria with her 
mixed empire, and the tempting provinces of the Danube. 
In a word, the, modern doctrine of nationality favors the 
assimilation of all the elements of a people — race, lan- 
guage, territory — under common political institutions. 
Hence, when European critics prophesy danger to the 
Union from extent of territory, and growth of numbers, 
we answer, Look at home for the solution of this com- 
mon problem, and, if you please, common peril, of nation- 
ality. The United States have in this problem fewer 
elements of danger than has any other great and growing 
people. Their accessions of territory have not brought 
with them a population alien in race, language, manners, 
religion, to be held as a subject people, or transformed by 
the slow processes of time. The acquisition of Mexico or 
Cuba, to be sure, admitting to political equality whole 
communities, provinces, people, so utterly foreign to the 
spirit and ideas of the nation, would be fraught with 
dangers both to liberty and union. Such wholesale an- 
nexation would be quite another test of vitality than the 
gradual absorption of immigrants, though these, in the 
end, might count by the million. But our acquisitions, 
even by conquest, have been of wild lands, or of territory 
sparsely occupied, never of provinces teeming with a for- 
eign and hostile people ; and I have shown already that 
the common sense and the moral sense of the American 
people are set against buying or bullying the Mexican and 
the Cuban into American citizenship. We have not enough 
of philanthropy for our distracted neighbors, nor enough 
of ambition for the spread of liberty, to peril the whole 
future of free institutions by such conquests, whether of 
policy or of arms ; and since the old spring of filibuster- 
ing is broken, and its motive gone, we are not selfish nor 
unscrupulous enough to spoil our neighbor because he is 
weak and his weakness makes him troublesome. The 
American Republic has little to fear from that sort of ex- 
pansion that brought ruin to Rome. 



THE NATION TESTED. 179 

Hence, also, the United States is freed from the perilous 
necessity of governing annexed provinces by the sword. 
Needful as a standing army may be for protection and 
defence, needful at times even for the nursing of liberty 
itself, all history shows that it may become a menace to 
the freedom of the people, or, what is worse, accustom 
them to a rule of iron. Vast as is our territory, and 
multitudinous our population, we are free from the per- 
plexity of conquered provinces of unsympathetic races, 
and from the necessity of military government. 

The secret of the stability of the Union under the strain 
of territorial expansion was discerned by Washington, and 
set forth in his Farewell Address : " Is there a doubt 
whether a common government can embrace so large a 
sphere? Let experience solve it. To listen to mere 
speculation in such a case were criminal. We are author- 
ized to hope that a proper organization of the whole, with 
the auxiliary agency of governments for the respective 
subdivisions, will afford a happy issue to the experiment. 
'Tis well worth a fair and full experiment." At that time 
the sixteen States of the Union possessed a territory of 
827,844 square miles, being nearly seven times as large as 
Prussia then was (in 1797) ; but, since the retirement of 
Washington, the territory of the United States has been 
quadrupled. The purchase of Louisiana added 1,171,931 
square miles; Texas and the Mexican cessions, 968,481 
square miles ; Alaska, 577,390 square miles ; and these, 
with Oregon and Florida, have enlarged the area of the 
Union to 3,603,884 square miles, — more than four times 
that of 1797, and seventeen times the area of the present 
German Empire. The fair and full experiment of a com- 
mon government over so large a sphere has come to an 
issue happy beyond the sanguine yet serious hope of 
Washington. The reason is, that, in the United States, 
we do not establish government from above, but build it 
from beneath. With each advance of population go the 
institutions of local government. In all their local con- 
cerns, the people care for themselves ; and then they 
adhere by instinct to that great national organism that 
gives them in their very infancy the strength and protec- 
tion of the full-grown nation. The border-line of the 



180 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

march of occupation may, for a time, be possessed by the 
lowest elements of society, and marked by lawlessness and 
ruffianism ; but how soon does civilization overtake and 
efface it all ! I have been in a border settlement where I 
feared to sleep amid the horde of villains around me : ten 
years later I have found on that spot a town, with schools, 
churches, houses, looking as peaceful as if they had stood 
a century ; while bar-room ruffianism skulked out of sight. 
That is American civilization, that follows every footstep 
of adventure or of gain with the teacher and the preacher, 
and makes the Indian wild and. the pioneer's clearing 
blossom as the rose. No page of history presents a record 
of more silent, patient heroism, or more self-sacrificing 
patriotism, than the all unwritten, unpublished lives of 
the teachers and missionaries of the "West. Yes, it is and 
shall forever be possible for the Union to hold together, 
based everywhere upon the same' institutions of liberty 
and light, of order and love. 1 

Quite germane to the question of territory is that of 
immigration as affecting the unity and permanence of the 
people of the United States. I count it the social and 
political marvel of the century that the native-American 
stock has absorbed such vast promiscuous hordes of 
foreigners, with so little detriment to itself and its institu- 
tions, llistoiy gives examples of the migration of tribes 
and peoples for the occupation of new territories by settle- 
ment or conquest ; but there is no precedent for a nation 
receiving into its bosom millions of foreigners as equal 
sharers in its political rights and powers. With a mag- 
nanimity almost reckless, the United States have done 
this, and have survived. Immigration first assumed pro- 
portions worthy of note in the decade from 1830 to 1&40, 
when it reached the figure of 599,000. In the decade 
from 1840 to 1850, it increased to 1,713,000; and the 
report of the Bureau of Statistics for 1874 gives for the 
ten calendar years from Jan. 1, 1864, to Dec. 31, 1873, 
inclusive, a net immigration of 3,287,994. Compare these 
figures with the fact that the purchase of Louisiana, over 
a million square miles, brought with it scarcely twenty 
thousand white inhabitants, and the nearly a million 

1 See note at end of Lecture. 



THE NATION TESTED. 181 

square miles acquired through Texas and the Mexican 
cessions brought only some fifty thousand, and it will be 
seen how much more formidable has been the problem of 
immigration than that of territory. The good and the evil 
of this wholesale influx of foreign elements into the body 
politic of the United States are so nearly balanced, that it 
is hard to say which preponderates. While it has added 
vastly to the productive industry and material wealth of 
the country, it has detracted from the dignity of labor in 
the eyes of the native American, and has driven out the 
good old times when the American boy did not scorn to 
be apprenticed to a trade or a farm, and the American girl 
to go out to service, or work in a factory. In this respect, 
the foreign element has somewhat damaged the manly 
tone and hardy spirit of our people. The common folk 
do not like to work beside the Irish greenhorn or the 
German boor: they don't like what smacks of "the 
pauper labor of Europe." 

If, in some quarters, foreign influence has stimulated the 
culture of music and other arts and amenities of life, on 
the other hand it has set itself against that wholesome 
observance of Sunday and of temperance laws which had 
been the safeguard of the native population against any 
excess of the physical and sensuous over the rational and 
spiritual. If, in some aspects, it has liberalized thought 
and customs, on the other hand it has spread the mischiefs 
of rationalism and materialism, and has also furnished a 
constituency for the Romish hierarchy, which, after Eng- 
land had supplanted France and Spain, had well-nigh lost 
hope of that portion of the American continent. If the 
foreign elements of the population, being played off against 
each other, have at times done a good service to a political 
party, if they have given us now and then a statesman or 
a scholar, on the other hand they have furnished the chief 
constituency of the rings that have corrupted our polls 
and disgraced our civic administration. If they have mul- 
tiplied population as an element of national wealth, they 
have multiplied pauperism in a still greater ratio, and have 
brought with them the feudalistic and communistic notion 
that government owes a living to the poor. If they have 
swollen our census tables, they have fearfully swollen our 
tables of crime. 



182 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

The last report of the police ©f New York shows for the year a 
total of arrests, 8-1,514. 

Of these there were born in the United States . 30,916 

" " " in Ireland 38,009 

" " " in England and dependencies . 4,385 

" " " in Germany 9,597 

" " " in all other countries . . . 1,607 
Now the census of 1870 gives us the total population of New York, 
942,292. 

Of these were born in the United States . . . 523,198 
" " " in foreign countries . . . 419,094 

Hence, in the first place, of the whole number of crimi- 
nals in New York in that year, notwithstanding the fact 
that the worst creatures from the country find their way 
to this metropolis, the native Americans furnished but 
thirt} T -five and five-tenths per cent against sixty-three and 
five-tenths of foreign birth. But this is not the fairest 
ratio. The population of New York, by the census of 
1870, consisted of 523,198 native-born Americans and 
419,094 foreigners ; and, of these last, 234,557 were Irish, 
and 151,203 Germans. Hence the native criminality was 
barely six per cent of the native population, while the 
foreign criminals were twelve and seven-tenths per cent of 
the foreign population ; and of these the Germans were 
six and three-tenths of the German immigrants, and the 
Irish eighteen per cent of the Irish. Again : the police 
report of New- York City for twelve years, from 1860 to 
1872, shows as the total of arrests, 899,544. Of these, 
284,591 were native-born (only thirty-one and six-tenths 
per cent) against 614,953 foreign-born (or sixty-eight and 
four-tenths per cent). Once more : the census for 1870 gives 
the total population of the United States at 38,558,371. 
Leaving out of view the colored people, whose vices and 
crimes are largely due to a previous state of slavery and 
the sudden change to a state of freedom, there were in 
prison on the 1st of June of that year 16,117 native whites 
and 8,728 foreigners. Here, at first view, the average is 
against the native population. But, when we divide the 
population according to nativity, we have 28,111,133 whites 
of native birth, of whom 1 in 1,744 was in prison, and 
5,567,229 of foreign birth, of whom 1 in 638 was in prison. 
That is the relative ratio for the whole country. If we 



THE NATION TESTED. 183 

tale the two States of New York and Massachusetts, 
which, with their large cities and manufacturing towns, 
attract a great percentage of native vice and crime, and 
in their seaports retain a large percentage of foreign immi- 
gration, we have an astounding result. In 1870 New York 
had 3,244,406 native inhabitants, of whom 2,323 were in 
prison on the 1st of June, and 1,138,353 foreigners, of 
whom 2,046 were in prison ; that is, a foreign population 
of barely one-fourth furnished nearly one-half the occu- 
pants of the prisons. Massachusetts had a native popula- 
tion of 1,104,032, of whom 1,291 were in prison, and a 
foreign population of 353,319, of whom 1,235 were in 
prison ; that is, with less than one-fourth of the population, 
foreigners furnished full one-half the criminals. Europeans 
who would judge intelligently American society must 
weigh honestly such statistics. Surely the sixty-four per 
cent of imported criminals are not the product of " Ameri- 
can civilization." The fact, that, with such tides of 
crime and pauperism rolling in annually from Europe, the 
native elements of order and virtue have not only held 
their own, but have gained upon the population with 
schools, churches, and law-abiding communities, shows the 
moral stamina of American society, and the conservative 
strength of American institutions. 

The reason of this lies in the vigor of the native stock, 
and the vitality of the native morality and religion. The 
latter topic belongs to a subsequent chapter. But a word 
is needed here touching the potency of the native- American 
stock. On this point the most preposterous notions pre- 
vail in Europe, and especially in Germany, where one 
ought to find accuracy in wxnks used as text-books in 
schools, and in the essays of publicists and statisticians. 
It is said that the native white population is growing 
sterile and would run out if not constantly recruited from 
Europe ; that in the United States a mixed race is forming, 
with as yet no fixed character ; that already foreign ele- 
ments are gaining the preponderance ; that ten millions of 
the population are German. 1 These absurd statements I 
have publicly exposed in a paper read before the Geo- 
graphical Society of Berlin. Summarily, the facts are, that, 

1 See Daniel's Geography, and Louis Schade. 



1^4 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

by the census of 1870, the total population of the United 
States was 38,558,371 ; and the sum total of those who were 
born in foreign lands was but 5,567,229, and of these the 
Germans could count only 1,690,410. In addition to the 
above 5,567,229 foreigners residing in the United States, 
the census gives 5,321,786 persons, one or both of whose 
parents were of foreign birth. Hence the entire foreign 
element in the United States, composed of all living immi- 
grants, and all children even one of whose parents was an 
immigrant, is represented by 10,892,015. Immigration 
has reached its maximum, and is likely to decline with 
the improved condition of Ireland and Germany, and the 
increased dearness of living in the United States. 

Vital statistics show a heavier rate of mortality among 
the foreign than among the native-born population. In the 
fifty years from 1820 to 1870, about two millions of the 
registered immigrants have disappeared by death or return. 
Dr. Edward Jarvis l has proved from official returns, that 
there are now living in the United States, as descendants 
from the population of 1790 (when the first census was 
taken) sixty-two per cent of the present population: 
twenty-four per cent of the population arc native-born 
of foreign parents (one or both), leaving but fourteen 
per cent to the actual immigration against sixty-two of 
the good old colonial stock. Of 1,500,000 men raised 
by the North during the civil war, over eighty per cent 
were native-born Americans ; and in the Southern army 
the percentage was still higher. A surgeon who exam- 
ined thousands of recruits, each man stripped to the buff, 
told me, that, in all conditions of manly vigor for service 
as soldiers, the native-born were superior to the foreign- 
born ; and that this held true not only of men from the 
country, but of men born and reared under the vitiating 
influence of city life. Life-insurance tables show that 
the average duration of life in the United States is larger 
than in England. The native stock of American society 
has not lost its vigor : on the contrary, it has grappled 
with this before-unheard-of mass of immigration, and has 
so far mastered it. It remains only to leave immigration 
to its normal conditions, without those artificial stimulants 

i Atlantic Monthly, April, 1872. 



THE NATION TESTED. 185 

that have heretofore been applied in the belief that we 
had an unbounded extent of land and great scarcity of 
labor. The " hard times " of the past few years have 
demonstrated that the country was overstocked with labor, 
and farmed in excess of market facilities, and that we were 
drawing upon ourselves prematurely the mischiefs of older 
countries. 

To avert these dangers, the government should alto- 
gether refrain from that artificial stimulus to wages, under 
the fiction- of "protection to American industry," which 
allures foreign labor to come over and compete with 
American workmen, and underbid them at their side ; and 
should also refrain from any mediation between foreign 
governments and their subjects with a view to making 
emigration easy and tempting to the latter. If Ireland 
was sometime oppressed and impoverished, if ever Ger- 
mans felt their home-burdens grievous to be borne, it was 
kind and noble in America to offer freedom and a home to 
immigrants and refugees. But now that Ireland. is freed 
from her state-church and many of her land-burdens, and 
is constantly improving, America has no call of philan- 
thropy toward her ; and as for Germans, if they imagine 
they have grievances, they have precisely the same reme- 
dy with ourselves, — a constitutional government, and a 
parliament elected by universal suffrage. Why, then, 
should we seek to attract them from their fatherland ? 
Why make treaties to ease them of their military obliga- 
tions in case of emigration ? Let them look to their own 
parliament for such redress as shall seem wise and good 
for the nation as a whole. Those who run away from 
their just obligations in one country are not likely to 
make good citizens in another. If the government of the 
United States will repeal all treaties of favoritism, and let 
alone all meddling in the domestic relations of foreign 
countries, immigration will adjust itself to the law of sup- 
ply and demand, and prove a blessing to both parties. 

" Xot long since, I was compelled to take a night's lodg- 
ing at a private house. For a bed, supper, and grog for 
myself, my three companions, and three servants, I was 
charged, on going off without a breakfast next day, the 
sum of eight hundred and fifty dollars. The lady of 



186 CENTEKNTAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

the house politely added, that she had charged nothing for 
the rooms, and would leave the compensation for them 
to my discretion, although three or four hundred dollars 
would not be too much for the inconvenience to which she 
had been put by myself and my followers." This is not 
the complaint of an American at Vienna during the Inter- 
national Exposition, nor of an Englishman afflicted with 
Confederate or Turkish bonds. It was the experience of 
Gen. Baron von Kalb on his way through Virginia, to 
re-enforce the Southern army, in the spring of 1780. In 
Philadelphia he paid four hundred dollars for a hat, the 
same for a pair of boots ; and for a good horse " was asked 
a price equivalent to ten years of his pay." * A Tory 
wit of the time of the Revolution announced that there 
would be a new issue of paper dollars by Congress as soon 
as the rags of Washington's army could be spared for that 
purpose. 2 Another Tory advertised for Continental money 
at the rate of a guinea per thousand, to be used for paper- 
ing rooms. Yet this money was an enforced legal tender ; 
and I have read upon the face of a sixpenny note the 
awful warning, ;4 To counterfeit is death." Jefferson com- 
puted that the two hundred millions of dollars emitted 
by Congress from 1775 to 1779 inclusive were worth, to 
those who received them, but about thirty-six millions of 
silver dollars. 3 But the nation survived this degradation 
of its credit, this bankruptcy of its treasury, and a few 
years later, under the genius of Alexander Hamilton, pro- 
duced a financial system that at once gave stability at 
home, and confidence abroad. In the strong but just 
words of Webster, " Hamilton touched the dead corpse of 
the public credit, and it sprang upon its feet." 4 

Again : during the war of 1812 all the banks south of 
New England suspended specie payments; and their paper 
"fell so low, that a bill on Boston could not be purchased 
at Washington under an advance of from twenty to twenty- 
five per cent." Yet the nation emerged with safety and 
honor from the financial complications of that day. The 
war of Gen. Jackson upon the Bank of the United States, 
and his famous Specie Circular, brought on another finan- 

i G. W. Greene, in Atlantic Monthly, October, 1875. 

2 Moore's Diary of the Revolution, ii. 16. 

3 Works, vol. ix. 259, 260. 4 Works, vol. i. 200. 



THE NATION TESTED. 137 

cial flurry ; yet in 1836 the United States presented the 
unwonted spectacle of a government having a surplus 
revenue without levying one direct tax upon the people. 
The country has passed through commercial revulsions, in 
which a class of merchants, bankers, and institutions, have 
proved dishonest ; now and then a State has taken upon 
itself the dishonesty and disgrace of repudiation : but such 
acts do not represent the tone of commercial or national 
honor. With a debt of enormous proportions, the United 
States are in no danger of following the precedent of 
Turkey; with a depreciated currency and a disordered 
commerce, they are not going to dishonor their bonds. If 
Congress will but take the warning of Walsin^ham in 
1780, that " money is on a footing with commerce and 
religion, they all three refuse to be the subjects of law," 
the nation will come out of its present depression more 
sober, more stable, more solid, than ever ; and no financial 
storm shall ever shake its centre, or jeopard its life. 

War, always a severe strain upon any nation, brings 
special risks to a republic. Besides the tax upon industry, 
finances, loyalty, and life, a state of war in a republic may 
facilitate encroachments upon popular liberty, and open 
the way to military usurpation or the rivalries of military 
factions. One needs but to recall the later history of the 
Roman Republic, and the Italian Republics of the middle 
ages, to realize how imminent and fatal such dangers 
may be. But the people of the United States have three 
times met these perils, and surmounted them. Not to 
speak of the wars with Tripoli and Algiers, which gave a 
mortal blow to piracy in the Mediterranean ; the Indian 
war, in which Gen. Harrison broke Tecumseh's league ; the 
Florida war, that prepared the cession of the territory by 
Spain ; and the later war with the Seminoles, that led to 
their extermination, — the century has tested the American 
people by two foreign wars of significance and a civil war 
of colossal proportions. The war with England in 1812 was 
entered into with little enthusiasm, and much open opposi- 
tion ; and it dragged along, with no decisive results and 
some humiliating disasters, till both parties were ready for 
peace in 1815. But it proved the United States able to 
cope in arms with the power from which they had won 



188 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

their independence, and especially capable of defying the 
mistress of the sea. The war was begun to resist the 
right of search and the impressment of seamen from 
American vessels : it made the names of Bainbridge, Bid- 
die, Decatur, Hull, Jones, Lawrence, Perry, Porter, Stew- 
art, illustrious in naval warfare ; and when Perry quit his 
sinking flag-ship in an open boat, under fire of the enemy, 
and, mounting his second ship, captured the entire squad- 
ron of Lake Erie, the hitherto unchallenged refrain, " Pule, 
Britannia, rule the waves," was broken by his laconic report, 
" We have met the enemy, and they arc ours." The clos- 
ing battles of Lundy's Lane and New Orleans left America 
mistress of herself, at least from the St. Lawrence to the 
Gulf of Mexico. 

The war with Mexico in 1846, though costing relatively 
little in treasure and blood, was a severe strain upon the 
morale of the nation. It was not only against the judg- 
ment, but against the conscience, of a large body of the 
people, who looked upon it as an unwarrantable invasion 
of a neighbor country in order to extend the area of slave- 
ry. Though it gave occasion for brilliant feats of arms 
under Gens. Scott, Taylor, and Wool, and secured to the 
United States possession of Texas, New Mexico, and Cali- 
fornia, this acquisition proved a Pandora's box of plagues 
and woes. 

We have seen in the Third Lecture how sedulously the 
term " slavery " and any formal sanction of the s}*stem were 
kept out of the Constitution, and how general, at that time, 
was the expectation that slavery would come to an end, 
as incongruous with the new order of things, and wasteful 
in the view of political economy. As the sentiment and 
practice of Christendom then were, slavery having been at 
first forced upon the Colonies, its existence at the forma- 
tion of the Union was a thing for which " nobody was to 
blame ; " and it was left, without recrimination, to those 
who were implicated in it to ease themselves of it in their 
own way. But, as time went on, the invention of the cot- 
ton-gin, by giving new facility to slave-hands, increased 
the value of slave-labor ; and the fact that slaves, though 
not citizens, were reckoned as three-fifths in the basis of 
representation, proved to the South a valuable element of 



THE NATION TESTED. 189 

political power. Nevertheless, the North and West, invit- 
ing immigration, and favoring enterprise and expansion, 
began to give a political preponderance to free labor : and, 
inasmuch as the Ordinance of 1787 and the Missouri Com- 
promise had set a barrier to the extension of slavery north- 
ward, the system demanded new territory for its own 
productiveness, and new States for retaining its balance in 
the Senate ; and so the old-fashioned toleration to slavery, 
doomed to a natural death, gave place to the propagation 
of slavery by use of the Constitution as its vital force, and 
to a counter-movement for its abolition as a political dan- 
ger and a moral evil. If, in the period from 1820 to 1850, 
the South had resolutely planned the gradual but certain 
extinction of slavery, I am persuaded that the North 
would have freely shared with her the financial loss, and 
left her to transform her domestic institutions in her own 
way. But when the policy of maintaining and propagat- 
ing the system was pushed not only over the territory of 
the continent, but within the territory of the Constitution, 
the North took alarm ; and when, finally, the restrictive 
compromises of former days were repealed, and the Fugi- 
tive-slave Law made the United-States Government active, 
and the people of the United States personally responsible, 
in the support and extension of slavery, then that old 
troublesome, stubborn, sometimes wilful Puritan thing 
called conscience was roused ; and this soon entered into 
and controlled political action. Under the old state of 
things, the existence of slavery as a purely local institution 
of the Southern States touched no man's conscience at 
the North, since the resident of a non-slaveholding State 
had no more responsibility for it there than in Cuba. He 
might regret it ; but he could not reach it to remove it. 
But when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise (1854) 
threw open to slavery territory once consecrated, to free- 
dom, and the decision of the Supreme Court in the 
Drecl Scott case held slaves to be property in every part 
of the national territory, the conscientious men of the 
North felt, that, through their representatives at the seat 
of government, they were made personally responsible for a 
system which they disapproved politically, and condemned 
morally. Therefore they organized a party against the 



190 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

extension of slavery, and the support of it by the National 
Government. This organization was not directed against 
the South as a section, nor against the laws and institu- 
tions of the Southern States, but against certain political 
demagogues of the North, — the worst friends the South 
ever had, — who courted the support of the South by vol- 
unteering to be propagandists of slavery. These were 
the mischief-makers who arrayed party against partj^, and 
section against section. New compromises were essayed ; 
but blood was up. The armed resistance to the slave occu- 
pation of Kansas, and the raid of John Brown into Vir- 
ginia, had opened the gates of war ; and the election of 
Mr. Lincoln, in face of the threat of secession, determined 
the Southern leaders to put that threat in execution. 
Mr. Lincoln declared in his inaugural address, " I have no 
purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the insti- 
tution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I 
have no lawful right to do so ; and I have no inclination 
to do so." None can doubt the honesty of that statement: 
for though Mr. Lincoln was opposed to slavery upon moral 
grounds, and had opposed its extension into free territory 
upon grounds both political and moral, he was sworn to 
uphold the Constitution ; and he knew that the Constitu- 
tion gave him no power or pretext of interfering with 
slavery in the States. Later on, the state of war gave him 
that power as a measure for suppressing rebellion. But 
the die was cast. The fact of his inauguration showed 
that the political rule of slavery was over; and, on the part 
of the South, secession was a foregone conclusion. As the 
conscience of the free States was roused by the acts of 
1850-54, so now the loyal enthusiasm of the people was 
roused by the firing on the flag of the nation at Fort Sum- 
ter. Then came four years of weary, bloody war, — on the 
one side for the disruption of the Union, on the other for 
the maintenance of the Union in its entirety and suprema- 
cy. As the executive head of the nation, Mr. Lincoln 
said, " In the contemplation of universal law and of the 
Constitution, the union of these States is perpetual. It is 
safe to say that no government proper ever had a provis- 
ion in its organic law for its own termination." * " The 

1 Inaugural, 1861. 



THE NATIOX TESTED. 191 

States have their status in the Union, and they have no 
other legal status."" l " Our popular government has often 
been called an experiment. Two points in it our people 
have settled, — the successful establishing and the success- 
ful administering of it. One still remains, — its successful 
maintenance against a formidable attempt to overthrow 
it." 2 And in that brief address at the dedication of the 
cemetery at Gettysburg, with a simple pathos that places 
this among the masterpieces of eloquence, Mr. Lincoln 
said, " Fourscore and seven }~ears ago, our fathers brought 
forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in 
liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are 
created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, 
testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived 
and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a 
great battle-field of that war. We are met to dedicate a 
portion of it as the final resting-place of those who here 
gave their lives that that nation might live. It is alto- 
gether fitting and proper that w^e should do this. 

" But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot 
consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave 
men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrat- 
ed it far above our power to add or detract. The world 
will little note, nor long remember, what we say here ; but 
it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the 
living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work 
that they have thus far so nobly carried on ; it is rather 
for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining 
before us, — that from these honored dead we take in- 
creased devotion to the cause for which they here gave 
the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly 
resolve that the dead shall not have died in vain ; that 
the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom; 
and that the government of the people, by the people, and 
for the people, shall not perish from the earth." 3 That 
prophetic hope was realized when slavery and secession 
w r ere extinguished together. 4 

But the vindication of the Union against separatism 
was not the only triumph of the war. The prolonged and 

l First message, July 4, 1861. 2 Ibid. 3 -$ QXt i^ is63. 

4 See note at close of Lecture. 



192 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

terrible strain to which the nation was subjected in spirit, 
men, and resources, showed the energy, the endurance, 
the voluntary sacrifice, the patriotic devotion, of a people 
self-developed under the institutions of liberty. The 
rapid equipment of a nation surprised by an attempt 
upon its organic life demonstrated that a free people can 
adapt themselves to any emergency, and learn from disas- 
ter new lessons of courage, patience, and success. The 
generalship -brought out in Lee and Jackson on the one 
side, and in Grant, Sherman, Thomas, and others, on the 
other, and the bravery of the men on both sides, showed" 
that the noblest qualities of heroism and chivalry can be 
brought out by occasion, where the government is not 
military, and the people are not compelled to learn the art 
of war. And the sublime moral spectacle of the disband- 
ing of vast armies, and their quiet return with their lead- 
ers to the occupations of peace, has taught the world how 
a great free nation can accept war as a stern necessity, 
without courting it as an excitement, or toying with it as 
a game. And, above all, the war that fought out a politi- 
cal quarrel to the end fought the contestants into that 
mutual prowess and respect that shall cement a manly 
and enduring friendship. The nation having passed this 
fiery ordeal, there was but one more test to which it could 
be put, — an assault upon its head, with a view to paralyze 
the government, and throw the country into anarchy. 
The assassination of CaBsar paved the way for the empire. 
The assassination of the Prince of Orange was followed 
by the disastrous dissensions between Maurice and Barne- 
veld. The assassination of Mr. Lincoln was absolutely 
without effect upon the normal functions of the govern- 
ment. It rekindled for awhile the smouldering animosities 
of the war, and gave greater stringency to the terms of 
settlement ; it elevated to the presidency a man whom the 
people had not soberly thought of for that contingency, 
and whose violent eccentricities provoked a somewhat 
demagogic movement for his impeachment. He was a 
man of strong, untrained powers, and stronger untamed 
will, and, in an arbitrary government, might have made an 
uncomfortable despot. But at heart Andrew Johnson had 
an honest, even fiery, devotion to the Union ; and his gross 



THE NATION TESTED. 193 

infirmities of habit, of ignorance, of vanity, and of tem- 
per, may be gently buried with his dying request, " Wrap 
me in the flag of my country." 

Of Abraham Lincoln it could be said, as of William of 
Orange, "He went through life bearing the load of a 
people's sorrows upon his shoulders with a smiling face. 
... As long as he lived, he was the guiding star of a 
whole brave nation ; and, when he died, the little children 
cried in the streets." But, though the nation felt the 
shudder of his death in all its veins, it gathered from his 
death the whole vigor and virtue of his patient, heroic life. 
After the lapse of ten years, I can find no fitter words to 
describe its effect than those with which I sought to re-as- 
sure my countiwmen on the very day of his assassination : 
" A chief lesson impressed upon us to-day is the imperish- 
able vitality of government, and the grandeur of our 
Constitution under all emergencies. We have seen it 
tested in conflict with foreign powers ; we have seen it 
tested by the fearful strain of civil war, and by the scarce 
less anxious trial of a presidential election in the midst of 
war ; and it has stood. And now, under this severest 
shock, — a shock that might shatter a kingdom or an em- 
pire into chaos, — it still stands. That mysterious, invisi- 
ble, impalpable entity we call the State, that intangible 
something that we call Government, stands forth to-day in" 
awful reality. The sovereignty of the people lifts its 
next representative into the just vacant chair. The State 
moves on without pause at the nation's grief, without 
concussion from the blow that struck down the nation's 
head. The bullet of the assassin did not touch its vitali- 
ty. The life of the Constitution was not endangered. 
The State moves calmly, steadily onward, with no jar in 
any of its functions. It seems to me that the statue of 
Liberty which crowns the dome of the Capitol, — that 
worthy and typical memorial of Abraham Lincoln's ad- 
ministration, — looking calmly down upon the august pres- 
ence of death, beckoned to the State beyond, saying, 4 Let 
the dead bury their dead : follow thou me.' And the 
State moved on, and will move on, in the line of freedom 
and justice, unshaken forever." 1 

1 Speech at the Union League Club, New York, April 15, 18(35. 



194 CENTENNIAL OF AMEKICAN INDEPENDENCE. 



NOTE ON FOREIGN PREDICTIONS CONCERNING THE 
UNITED STATES. 

There is a curious tendency in foreign critics of American society 
to resolve every social and political problem within the republic into 
the question of the continuance of the republic itself. This is done 
even by critics who bear no ill-will toward America, and are not 
averse to popular government. A striking example of such political 
pessimism occurs in the address of Prof. Huxley at the opening of 
the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Huxley had spoken 
generously enough of America as a whole, and his own reception in 
particular ; but he closed his address with these words : — 

".I cannot say that I am in the slightest degree impressed by your 
bigness, or your material resources as such. Size is not grandeur, and 
territory does not make a nation. The great issue about which hangs a 
true sublimity and the terror of overhanging fato is, What are you going 
to do with all these things? "What is to be the end to which these are to 
be the means V You are making a novel experiment, in politics on the 
greatest scale which the world has yet seen. Forty millions at your first 
centenary, it is reasonably to be expected, that, at the second, these States 
will be occupied by two hundred millions of English-speaking people 
spread over an area as large; as that of Europe, and with climates and in- 
terests as diverse as those of Spain and Scandinavia, England and Russia. 
You and your descendants have to ascertain whether this great mass will 
hold together under the forms of a republic and the despotic reality of 
universal suffrage; whether State-rights will hold out against centraliza- 
tion without separation; whether centralization will get the better without 
actual or disguised monarchy; whether shifting corruption is better than a 
permanent bureaucracy : and as population thickens in your great cities, 
and the pressure of want is felt, the gaunt spectre of pauperism will stalk 
among you, and communism and socialism will claim to be heard. 

"Truly, America has a great future before her, —great, in toil, in care, 
and in responsibility; great in true glory, if she be guided in wisdom and 
righteousness; great in shame, if she fail. I cannot understand why other 
nations should envy you, or fail to see that it is for the highest interests of 
mankind that you should succeed; but the one condition of success, your 
solo safeguard, is the moral worth and intellectual clearness of the indi- 
vidual citizen. Education cannot give these; but it can cherish them, and 
bring them to the front, in whatever station of society they are to be 
found; and the universities ought to be and may be the fortresses of the 
higher life of the nation." 

All this is meant for friendly counsel, and it should be received in 
the same spirit; though the ill-concealed tone of patronage reminds 
one of " a certain condescension in foreigners," with which the 
English critic is especially apt to divert us. But no well-informed 
American can read without a smile the assumption of Prof. Huxley, 
that every problem that he fancies to arise in the future of American 
society must involve the existence of the republic ; that our " novel 
experiment" is oscillating between "separation" and "monarchy." 
and that all our energies must be strained to the one purpose of 
making the mass "hold together." A scientific study of American 
institutions might have acquainted him with the protoplasm of our 



NOTE ON FOREIGN PREDICTIONS. 195 

national life, — that local self-government whose vital force is not 
impaired by extent of territory, or mass of population. This is the 
" yeast " that leavens the whole lump, and whose fermentation 
renders the mass porous without destroying its cohesion. 

Or, had Prof. Huxley studied scientifically the Machinery Hall 
at the Philadelphia Exposition, it might have occurred to him that 
the great Corliss Engine was the analogue of the National Constitu- 
tion ; each separate machine being connected with this by its own 
band, sharing the central impulse and control, yet doing its own work 
in its own way ; and the vast aggregate of machines, wheels within 
wheels, performing their diversified functions with a sublime har- 
mony of movement, and conservation of energy, without either con- 
centration, collision, or divergence. 

There are certain scolds in England, from Matthew Arnold down 
to Mrs. Partington, who fancy that the British Constitution is 
threatened by every new agitation in the politics or the economics 
of society. An estimable lady said to me in England the other day, 
" Do you see any hope for England? I fear it is all over with us. 
We have provoked the Lord by our doings in China and India, and 
by our worldliness and luxury at home ; and now it would seem that 
the plagues of Darwinism and Eitualism are let loose upon us to 
devour us. Don't you think we are living under the Sixth Vial? " 

I was so irreverent as to doubt whether the writer of the Apoca- 
lypse looked much beyond the plagues and vials of his own time, and 
had so much as a speck of England in his prophetic eye ; and I f elfc 
confident, that, however Darwin and Huxley might disturb the foun- 
dations of the universe, they would never lay sacrilegious hands upon 
the British Constitution; while, as to Ritualism, I was sure the 
average Englishman had too much common sense in his head to be 
lured to destruction by the gyrations of some weaker Englishman's 
heels. No doubt England has to do with problems of very grave 
import. No doubt exigencies will continue to arise that shall task 
all the wisdom of her statesmen, and all the patriotism and endur- 
ance of her people. The question of dis-establishing the National 
Church; the labor question, — agricultural, mining, manufacturing; 
the education question, hitherto but glozed over ; the Irish question, 
that will not down; the Indian question, with the glowing heat of 
native intelligence, and the Russian glacier crowding on ; the woman 
question, that in England means something more than the airy 
nothings and puffings of American platforms ; the coal question, 
now that the exhaustion of English mines is matter of mathematical 
calculation; the industrial question, now that American manufac- 
tures begin to compete with English in foreign markets ; the navy 
question, now that other nations are creating fleets to dispute tho 
dominion of the sea; the army question, now that the Continent is 
transformed into a camp of nations in arms, — these, and many others, 
are grave and perilous questions for England to grapple with : but he 
would be a neophyte in political philosophy who should confound 
such questions with the existence of the British Constitution. The 
monarchy might not be able to survive another George upon the 
throne ; but, aside from this, the advent of a democracy in England 
is hardly more likely than the return of a Stuart or a Tudor. 



196 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

Often as I am called upon to speak in England upon public 
questions, I have never deemed it courteous nor vise for me as a for- 
eigner to meddle in domestic controversies, nor to hint at these as 
affecting the life or death of the nation, destined to make her ' ; great 
in glory," or " great in shame." We, too, have our problems, grave, 
earnest, imminent. But these are questions of party, of policy, of 
reform, of adaptation, not at all questions of the form of government, 
of the life of the State. These last do not enter into the thought of 
the American citizen, do not come within the horizon of political ac- 
tion. They are settled in the very organism of society ; and this is 
part of the life of the individual. Our race-stock is as old and as 
vital as the English, from "which it sprang; our political force and 
sagacity have not lost by transplanting; our area for the ventilation 
of necessary social problems is wider, freer, and therefore safer, than 
that of England. Every question affecting government has been tried 
and determined. The problems hinted at by Prof. Huxley are simply 
problems of administration and adjustment, and do not come within 
a thousand leagues of the form and essence of government. Let 
English critics once master this distinction, and their counsels will 
be respected vv here now their croakings are laughed at. Mr. Mill per- 
ceived this when he indorsed the opinion of M. de Tocqueville, that 
"if a community is so situated or so ordered that it can support the 
transitory action of bad laws, and can await without destruction 
the result of the general tendency of the laws, that country will 
prosper more under a democratic government than under any other." 



NOTE ON PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS AND CIVIL WAR. 

The closeness of the presidential vote in 1S7G, and the charges 
of fraud, and threats of violence, that the uncertainty of the count 
gave rise to, called forth in Europe fresh prophecies of civil war and 
the failure of republican government. The silly suggestion of some- 
body in New Orleans, that the United States should be transformed 
into an empire under Gen. Grant, was paraded in German news- 
papers with an air of triumph, and in delicious obliviousness of the 
fact, that though an American editor could make such a suggestion, 
and simply be laughed at, should a German editor propose the aboli- 
tion of the empire for a republic, and the disbanding of the stand- 
ing army, he might be treated to a change of air and diet in the 
nearest "jail or fortress. Some English critics have assumed that 
civil war was imminent, because, as they conceive, the Rebellion 
broke out with as little warning, through dissatisfaction with the 
election of a president. It is not surprising that foreigners should 
have imagined the crisis to be so serious, since so few even of the 
best-informed European writers have fairly mastered the Constitu- 
tion and Government of the United States or the characteristics of 
the American people, and since so much of European experience 
has pointed to revolution or war as the normal solution of political 



NOTE OX PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS, ETC. 1QJ 

difficulties. But people should not pronounce upon what they do not 
understand, ncr prophesy without valid tokens of inspiration. 1 Grave 
and perplexing as was this phase of a presidential contest, the thought- 
ful American could see in it nothing perilous, nor even threatening. 
Riots there might be, and heated dispute ; but there was no analogy 
in the case to the Rebellion of 1861. First, there was not now, as 
in the Rebellion, any great social, financial, and sectional interest 
binding one portion or party against the other, and forming at once 
the motive and the nucleus for resistance and revolt. Though 
the election of Mr. Lincoln was made a pretext for the Rebel- 
lion, the preservation of the system of slavery was its real and only 
motive. The speech of Mr. Stephens, then Vice-President of the 
Confederacy, at Savannah, in March 18G1, put that point squarely 
and conclusively. After characterizing Jefferson's doctrine of the 
rights of nature and the equality of races as an error, and the gov- 
ernment founded upon such ideas as resting on the sand, Mr. Ste- 
phens said, " Our new government is based upon quite the contrary 
ideas. Its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great 
truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man ; that slavery, 
subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condi- 
tion. Our government is the first in the history of the world that 
rests upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. . . . 
The stone which the builders rejected has become the corner-stone 
of our new edifice." 

When we consider in how many States contiguous to one another 
slavery was the one vital interest of society, the basis of labor, the 
source of wealth, the drudge of the household and the plantation ; 
how it had existed from the foundation of the Colonies, and had 
grown with the Commonwealth, until every life, fortune, and estate 
was bound up with it, — we see in this interest, concentrated within a 
circumscribed territory, a motive to violent defence to which there is 
nothing analogous in the political differences of parties scattered 
over the whole country, changing their relations and proportions 
year by year, and, except in the matter of voting, accustomed to act 
together as neighbors and friends. There is not enough to kindle 
civil war in the breezes of a popular contest that may change about 
at the next election. Next : the election of 187G involved no question 
of separation, or of change in the form of government. Both parties 
were alike interested in maintaining the Union and the Constitution : 
the only dispute was, which party, by legal methods, should gain con- 
trol of the administration for a term of years. Again : there was 
no organization on either side for deciding the issue by force. So far 
as there was any show of force, this was on the part of the actual 
government, by way of police, as a precaution for maintaining pub- 

1 In a literary circle where false quantity in a Latin quotation was 
the subject of criticism, Macaulay said, "No one is under obligation to 
quote: hence, when one does quote, he is bound to quote correctly." No 
foreigner is under obligation to utter oracles concerning the United States: 
hence, when a foreigner volunteers to pronounce or prophesy, he is bound 
to understand what he is talking about, under penalty of being laughed 
at for a pretentious ignorance. Even the Latter-day Prophecies fall under 
this rule. 



198 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN" INDEPENDENCE. 

lie order. Even this was deprecated by the political leaders upon 
both sides, who desired that the election should be decided fairly, 
without violence or fraud. In point of fact, the political crisis of 
1876 brought out in fine relief the merits of the Constitution of the 
United States and the better qualities of the American people. It 
showed how marvellously the Constitution has provided for every 
emergency ; that even should the popular election be thwarted by 
fraud, or declared void through irregularity, 1/0 function of the gov- 
ernment would be suspended even for a moment. There being 
neither President nor Vice-President, the President of the Senate — 
itself a permanent body — would at once become the executive 
head of the nation ; and the Supreme Court is at hand to settle any 
issues of fact. The crisis exhibited the law-abiding character of 
the American people. There were days of excitement; there was, 
of course, more or less loose and wild talk : but public opinion and 
the press were united in demanding that all legal forms should be 
observed, and the legal result accepted and obeyed. The practical 
good sense of the people was also brought out by this peculiar con- 
juncture of affairs. It Avas felt that there would be a way out of all 
complications, as there had been in like complications before. At 
the opening of the twenty-sixth Congress, in December, 1839, two 
delegations appeared, contesting the seats of New Jersey. '• Now, on 
first assembling, the House has no officers ; and the clerk of the pre- 
ceding Congress acts, by usage, as chairman of the body till a 
speaker is chosen. On this occasion, after reaching the State of 
New Jersey, the acting clerk declined to proceed in calling the roll, 
and refused to entertain any of the motions which were made for the 
purpose of extricating the House from its embarrassment." This 
went on for four days. Then John Quincy Adams rose, and " sub- 
mitted a motion requiring the acting clerk to proceed in calling the 
roll. Air. Adams was immediately interrupted by a burst of voices 
demanding, ' How shall the question be. put ? Who will put the ques- 
tion ? ' The voice of Mr. Adams was heard above the tumult, ' I 
intend to put the question myself.'" x That stroke of common sense 
solved the whole difficulty. And such confidence has the American 
in the average common sense of his fellow-citizens, that, during the 
whole presidential crisis of 1876, gold remained quietly and steadily 
at the lowest figure. 

Notorious and scandalous cases of political corruption had led 
European critics to look upon American politics as hopelessly given 
over to venality. Now, here was a case in which only one vote was 
needed to secure the triumph of a great and powerful party ; yet, in 
all the weeks of uncertainty, no one suggested nor imagined that this 
one vote could be bought. Peculation in secret, fraud by contrivance, 
there has been : but, in this case, whoever should betray his trust 
would certainly be known ; and no elector could have the hardihood 
to face the scorn and obloquy which the whole American people 
would visit upon such venal treachery. He must flee the country, or, 
like Judas, go out and hang himself. Upon the whole, the Ameri- 

1 Eulogy on John Quincy Adams, by Edward Everett 



NOTE ON PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS, ETC. 199 

can Constitution and the American people have nothing to fear from 
the judgment of history upon the peculiar tests of 1876. 

At the same time, this momentous contest has given emphasis to 
three measures of reform : — 

(1.) The establishment of the civil service upon the permanent 
basis of character and competence, by providing, on the one hand, 
that a civil officer shall have no vote, and take no part, in elections, 
during his tenure of office ; and, on the other, that all staff-officers of 
the government be placed beyond the reach of party favoritism in 
appointment or removal. What a large, persistant, and irritating- 
element of excitement would be withdrawn from the presidential 
contest, if there were no hungry thousands struggling over offices 
either in possession or in expectation ! 

(2.) The creation of permanent boards of election, whose mem- 
bers shall have no vote, and shall not be eligible to any office, shall be 
well paid, and be liable to fine and imprisonment for any malfeas- 
ance. The ridiculous blunders of nominating electors who were 
ineligible, and of omitting specific legal conditions, and the suspicions 
of fraudulent counting, would be obviated, if the registration of voters 
and the counting of votes were the duty of permanent non-partisan 
officials — like the town-clerks of Scotland — who had the fear of the 
states-prison before them if guilty of corruption or fraud. 

(3.) The withdrawal of the National Government from political 
contests in the South. In the treatment of the South, three capital 
blunders have been made, from the mischief of which the whole land 
is still suffering. The first blunder was that of treating with the 
rebels as States, instead of remanding them to a territorial condi- 
tion, from which new commonwealths should have emerged one by 
one when thoroughly purified. The alternative of " in the Union, or 
under it " — in it as loyal and legalized States, or under it as terri- 
tories forfeited to the National Government — was originally set forth 
in my address in New York, of July 4, 1801; and I have reason to 
believe that Mr. Lincoln regretted not having adopted this as the 
solution of the problems of slavery and of reconstruction. Of course, 
it is too late now to retrieve Mr. Seward's cardinal misconception of 
the situation. The next blunder was that of admitting to suffrage 
the emancipated blacks, with no conditions of time, character, or 
education. That mischief, also, seems beyond intervention. 

But the worst blunder of all has been the attempt of the General 
Government to do in the States of the South what it might properly 
have done in Territories of the United States. The mischiefs of 
this j)olicy of intervention are now so apparent, that the good sense 
of the country demands that it shall be abandoned. The cure of the 
South must be left to time, and. to the workings of self-interest and 
political ambition under the normal laws of human nature. If, in 
some districts, whites and blacks will fight, there is no way but to let 
them fight till they tire of anarchy and bloodshed. But, in most dis- 
tricts, it will be found that politicians, left to themselves, will court 
the negro vote upon opposite sides ; and the bugbear of a " solid 
South " will vanish before the election of 1880. 



LECTURE V. 

THE NATION JUDGED BY ITS SELE-DEVELOPMENT AND 
ITS BENEFITS TO MANKIND. 

ON the 18th June, 1875, the Crown Prince of Prus- 
sia, by command of his Majesty the Emperor, an- 
nounced his purpose to erect upon the heights near 
Hakenberg, in East Havelland, a monument to commemo- 
rate the victory of the Great Elector Frederic "William 
at Fehrbellin on the same day of June, 1G75. The order 
ran, " For our house, for our land and people, for the 
German fatherland, this great and memorable day of 
victory marks the beginning of the deliverance of German 
soil from foreign rule ; of the revival of Germany's renown 
in arms, and her peaceful military preparation for defen- 
sive and offensive war; of the fulfilment of those rising 
duties in which the name Brandenburg found and ap- 
proved its German call. To coming generations of our 
house, our Prussian people, and the German nation, this 
monument will serve through all time as a remembrancer 
of the hard beginnings, the long struggles, the sterling 
virtues, with which that was grounded and acquired, 
which it will be their duty and their honor before God 
and men to hold, to guard, and to strengthen." 

These heroic recollections can well stir the pride of 
every Prussian, and move to admiration, also, every one 
who honors patriotism in rulers and people, and can re- 
spect noble achievement and substantial progress in na- 
tions other than his own. 

Notwithstanding many re-actions, reverses, failures, — 
such as led Von Schon to write in 1808, " Fate seems to think 

200 



THE NATION JUDGED BY ITS SELF-DEVELOPMENT. 201 

necessary the still greater humiliation of Prussia," 1 — the 
State that the Great Elector redeemed from Sweden, that 
Frederic I. raised to the rank of a kingdom, and Frederic 
the Great to a power on the Continent strong in peace 
and formidable in war, and which the present reign has 
advanced to be almost a synonyine of military supremacy, 
imperial dominion, scientific culture, and the Protestant 
faith, — this Prussia of two centuries has given the world 
the most perfect example of that form of political society 
in which man exists for the State, and the State cares for 
all his interests in return for the control of all his powers. 
Though she has been slow in attaining to constitutional 
freedom and popular representation in government, and in 
regaining or restoring the remnants of local government 
that had survived the Thirty-years' war, 3^et Prussia has 
produced a civil service remarkable for intelligence, accu- 
racy, fidelity, and honor ; an educational system unexam- 
pled in universality, and thoroughness as to the rudiments 
of knowledge, and in facilities for the higher attainments; 
a church system of as much fairness as could exist without 
the separation of Church and State ; a judiciary, which, at 
least since Frederic the Great took in hand the miller 
Arnold's lawsuit, has been noted for exact and impartial 
justice ; an economical system, which, if it bears hard upon 
some, bears equally upon all, and affords small chance to 
rogues ; and a military system, which, if war must be, and 
peace a chronic preparation for war, is the most complete and 
efficient organization for the defence of the nation. Now, 
all this has been accomplished by one small State, upon 
an indifferent soil, which dates its self-consciousness as a 
political power from the victory of Fehrbellin in 1675. A 
people, then, is to be estimated, not by the years of its po- 
litical life, but by what it has done in those years for the 
improvement of society and the behoof of mankind. Rus- 
sia has seen her thousand years, and in that millennium has 
been slowly shaping out of chaos and barbarism a civilized 
State that yet may civilize the barbarian hordes and de- 
caying empires of Middle and Eastern Asia. But, in all 
these ages, what contribution has Russia made to the true 
forces of modern civilization, or the science of political 

1 Papers and letters of Theodore von Sclion, Berlin, Franz Duncker. 



202 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

society? Shall I speak of Spain in the splendor of her 
Moorish civilization, in the glory of her Christian art, 
commerce, colonization? How little of lasting good has 
she given to mankind ! France has survived her more 
than thousand years, and was for long the foremost race 
of Christendom. The whole world is her debtor in litera- 
ture, science, and art. Her revolution gave to Europe the 
secularization of political society, the prerogative and 
potency of peoples, and the example of a peasant proprie- 
torship in the soil. But, unhappily, the political fermenta- 
tions of France are too much like her champagne, — made 
for foreign export, and not for use at home ; and she has 
hitherto failed to give the world an assuring example of the 
combination of liberty with order, of private right with 
public duty, of individual independence with united sov- 
ereignty. Now, it is the proud pre-eminence of the United 
States that they have given the world that example ; and 
if a nation is to be estimated, not by its years, but by its 
services to mankind, and if the service is to be estimated 
by its value to the higher sphere of political science and 
the nobler sphere of human welfare, may not America, 
while owning her obligations to the past, feel that she has 
rendered a just equivalent in the theory and example of a 
government administered by the will of the people, with- 
out hereditary or military power, by the national and 
spiritual influence of a constitution without physical force, 
by reverence for law without appeal to terror ? In com- 
bining freedom with authority, in making religion abso- 
lutely free, in relying upon reason and conscience — " the 
sober second thought" of the people — for support, in bal- 
ancing all the powers of government, and making the 
State but a function and an instrument of man, the United 
States have made a contribution to the ethics of political 
society that cannot be measured by length of years. The 
formulating of these principles dates from July 4, IT 76 ; 
but the principles themselves, in the stuff and training of 
the American people, are older than Fehrbellin. " By their 
fruits }~e shall know them." 

First and most patent of the fruits of American life is 
the transformation of a vast, unexplored wilderness into 
the abode of civilized man. How extensive this conquest 



THE NATION JUDGED BY ITS SELF-DEVELOPMENT. 203 

of Nature has been, I have shown in the Fourth Lecture ; 
but let me here summarize, that, on the Atlantic, the United 
States coast stretches from 25° to 47° north latitude, about 
1,500 miles ; on the Gulf of Mexico, from 81° to 97° west 
longitude, about 1,100 miles ; on the Pacific, from 33° to 
49° north latitude, 1100 miles; to which is to be added 
Alaska, on the Arctic Ocean, and that its area in round 
numbers is 3,000 miles by 1,200, being a total of 3,603,- 
886 square miles. " Its great divisions are (1) The eastern 
seaboard, and the Appalachian ranges which press so close- 
ly upon it : this is the commercial and manufacturing 
region. (2) The Great Central Valley, pre-eminently the 
agricultural region. (3) The pastoral, or the region of the 
plains. (4) The mining region, or the Cordilleras." l This 
vast and diversified territory American enterprise has 
wrested from the wildness of Nature, and made available 
to mankind, and the greater part of it within the present 
century. To the superficial observer, this, indeed, may in- 
dicate nothing more than a material civilization ; and Car- 
lyle, of all men, was once betrayed into this superficiality. 
Twenty years ago he wrote, " Brag net yet of our Ameri- 
can cousins. Their quantity of cotton, dollars, industry, 
and resources, I believe to be almost unspeakable ; but I 
can by no means worship the like of these. What great 
human soul, what great thought, what great noble thing 
that one could worship or loyally admire, has yet been 
produced there? None: the American cousins have yet 
done none of these things. What have they done ? They 
have, doubled their population every twenty years." 2 Had 
Carlyle then never read a page of that greater than 

1 Gen. F. A. Walker. 

2 Latter-Day Pamphlets: the Present Time. It is amusing, by the side 
of this, to react Macaulay's lament over the lack of "great human souls " 
and " great noble things " in England : " What a nerveless, milk-and-water 

set the young fellows of the present day are! declares that there 

is not in the whole House of Commons any stuff, under live and thirty, 
of which a junior lord of the treasury can be made. It is the same in 
literature, and, I imagine, at the bar. 'it is odd that the last twenty-five 
years, which have witnessed the greatest progress ever made in physical 
science, the greatest victories ever achieved by man over matter, should 
have produced hardly a A*olume that will be remembered in 19C0, and 
should have seen the breed of great advocates and parliamentary orators 
become extinct among us." Macaulay made this entry in his diary 
March 9, 1850. Yet Dickens and Carlyle were then at the height of their 
fame. But we know that Macaulay had no great opinion of Dickens; 
and he seems not to have taken the trouble to read Carlyle. 



204 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

"human soul," Jonathan Edwards? nor heard the story of 
the apostolic Eliot ? Had the names of Otis, Hancock, 
Sam Adams, George Washington, quite faded from the 
canvas of great souls? Had that "noble thing," — of the 
delicate and cultured Dr. Kane giving his fortune and his 
life to the search for Sir John Franklin, in answer to the 
cry of the wife who refused to be a widow, — had this, and 
the many like examples of self-sacrifice for science and 
humanity, never met the e} r e of the worshipper of heroes ? 
Was there no greatness in the thought of Mills to compass 
the globe with Christian missions, nor heroism in the men 
and women who set out to do it ? Was there nothing that 
one could " loyally admire " in the little bands of cultivated 
men who assumed the hardships of frontier life, that the}* 
might make the whole land Christian, and who did it? 
Or was there not enough of fight in such heroism to satisfy 
the worshipper of power ? Carlyle, indeed, predicted that 
America's battle was " yet to fight." "America, too, will 
have to strain its energies in quite other fashion than 
this; to crack its sinews, and all but break its heart, as the 
rest of us have had to do, in thousand-fold wrestle with 
the pythons and mud-demons, before it can become a 
habitation for the gods." But when that daj T of agony did 
come, and the nation strained the thews of war, but 
would not " break its heart " so long as it had a dollar or 
a life to give to the " great thought," the " noble thing " 
of holding a continent for law, order, government, con- 
stitutional freedom, then where was Mr. Carlyle? Be- 
cause of his failure to discern the really potent forces in a 
civilization of which the axe, plough, and hammer were but 
passing signs, he failed to fulfil his own promise to " wish 
America strength for her battle," and victory through her 
agony. But, having got on without help or hinderance 
from these " latter-day " prophecies, America gently covers 
their nakedness as she brings to the prophet her octoge- 
narian crown, regretting only that he has not suffered her 
to twine with it those two most bright and lasting laurels, 
— love of liberty, and faith in man. 

Nowhere is there more need of Carlyle's own protest 
against shams than in dealing with that sham philosophy 
that would estimate the civilization of a people by its 



THE NATION JUDGED BY ITS SELF-DEVELOPMENT. 205 

acres of industry and its millions of workers, and insist 
that this is simply material. Is there, then, nothing intel- 
lectual, nothing moral, nothing scientific, nothing heroic, in 
all this stir and push in our day, — this rivalry of English, 
Germans, Americans, for the exploration of Africa, and the 
introduction of civilization into the heart of that continent? 
Is the mastery of the wilds of Nature, and the taming of 
her wilder races, the opening the resources of a continent 
to the commerce of the world, the improving of rivers, the 
building of canals, railways, telegraphs, post-roads, — is all 
this to be rated as but material and mercenary? May there 
not be thought in it all, may there not even be heart in it 
all, for the highest good of man ? What story of African 
exploration exhibits more of enduring heroism than was 
shown by Lewis and Clark, and by Fremont, as they forced 
their trackless way across the American continent to the 
Pacific? And where has science won worthier trophies 
than in the surveying expeditions of that vast interior ? 

It were most unjust to Germany, a most superficial esti- 
mate of her worth in history, to charge her with lack of 
enterprise or of humanitary zeal, because, shattered as she 
was by the Thirty-years' war, and surrounded by hostile 
fires, she concentrated her energies upon her internal 
development, — the construction of society, — with little 
thought of a world-mission. She did the work ' that was 
given her to do ; and by the self-development in literature, 
science, and art, to which she was so much the more con- 
strained by lack of opportunity for political and commer- 
cial expansion, she lias fulfilled a mission to mankind, and 
fitted herself for one yet higher. To America was given 
the mission of redeeming a waste continent, — this to be 
accomplished first of all ; but what she has done in sub- 
duing the elementary forces of Nature has been done at 
every step for the benefit of mankind. From first to last, 
hers was the march of a civilized people, of a Christian 
people, who planted as they went the institutions of con- 
stitutional freedom, and carried with them, or brought 
soon after in their train, the Bible, the school, the church, 
and the home. All that they conquered for themselves 
they offered with open heart and hand to the whole world. 
It was hardly mercenary to provide a home for the 



206 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

world's poor; it was hardly materialistic to offer secure 
and regulated liberty to the world's oppressed. One mar- 
vels that Carlyle had not discerned in this some token of 
that " new and brighter spiritual era that is slowly evolving 
itself for all men." 1 

Take the strongest possible example of the materialistic 
and mercenary in our civilization, and we shall see how 
fast the spiritual and moral have overtaken and are over- 
mastering it. In 1848 the news that gold had been found 
in California spread like wildfire through the Eastern 
States, and kindled such a rage for emigration as even 
America had not before witnessed. Everywhere there was 
a movement toward the land of promise, — many by the 
slow toilsome journey in wagons, on horseback, and afoot, 
across the continent ; more by the long and doubtful voy- 
age in sailing-vessels around Cape Horn. Naturally the 
enterprising and hardy were the first to go ; many of the 
shiftless also. Some went for naked love of gold, counting 
on sudden fortune ; some from love of adventure, or rest- 
less love of change ; many to better their condition, hoping, 
by a few years of toil, to lay the foundation of a lasting 
prosperity. A large percentage of the bad elements of 
society was in the first emigration to California. Many 
went who were no longer wanted at the East, or were too 
much wanted by the police ; and many also went only to 
learn and show how bad they could become when freed 
from the restraints of settled communities. It was a 
dreadful medley at the first ; and gambling, cheating, 
thieving, murder, drunkenness, lawlessness, and every vice, 
ran riot, so that a man held his purchase of life by the 
bowie-knife and the revolver. It was a sad world-spectacle 
of the nineteenth century ; but it was a wcrZcZ-spectacle 
of human depravity, not a special exhibition of American 
life. 

Already, in 1850, California showed a population of 
22,000 foreigners, or nearly one-fourth in a total of 92,- 
000 ; in I860, 116,000 foreigners in a population of 
878,000 ; and in 1870, a foreign population of 210,000 
against 850,000 native born. To-day, in the city of San 
Francisco, one-half the population, i.e. 73,719, are of for- 

* Signs of the Times. 






THE NATION JUDGED BY ITS SELF-DEVELOPMENT. 207 

eign birth, of whom 12,000 are Chinese, 14,000 Germans, 
and 38,000 English and Irish. California should be esti- 
mated in the light of these facts. In her origin she was 
an anomaly. Stragglers for fortune, adventurers, despe- 
radoes from both hemispheres, thrown suddenly and pro- 
miscuously together, nearly three thousand miles distant 
from the seat of government, with the desert and the 
Sierras between, with no time as yet for an efficient civil 
organization, and no adequate military force at hand, — 
this was indeed a condition of things in which human 
nature could show its common depravity, but for which 
no people nor institutions could fairly be held responsible. 
But what happened? and what has come of it? From 
this anarchy and chaos we presently see society emerging, 
and demanding safety, order, law. Serious, earnest men, 
shrewd, practical men, staid, good men, will make Califor- 
nia their home, and have it fit for homes for their wives 
and children. There is no home, no civilization, without 
woman ; and, in the first rush for gold, she had been left 
behind. But, now that woman is looked for in California, 
the ruffian and the rowdy, the loafer and the blackleg, must 
get out of the way. Order comes to the front as a Vigi- 
lance Committee ; justice is swift and terrible, but sure ; a 
certain " herculean labor and divine fidelity," Mr. Carlyle, 
" draining the Stygian swamp, and making it a fruitful 
field." 1 And what came of this ? A State that refused to 
admit slavery; a State that held loyally to the Union 
during the war, and gave enormous sums to the Sanitary 
Commission, though she might have set up an independ- 
ent empire of the Pacific ; a State that kept her cur- 
rency and her faith under the wrenchings of war and of 
financial disaster; a State that pushed her railway east- 
ward up the slopes of the mountains to link her destiny 
with the valley of the Mississippi and the Atlantic coast. 
And how came this to be? Along with the medley of 
that first emigration went a leaven of religious faith, — 
bands who went forth from the bosom of churches 
consecrated by prayer, and missionaries ready to " endure 
hardness as good soldiers of Christ." Some carried 
with them the framework of churches to be set up on 

i The New Downing Street. 



208 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

arriving; but at first both churches and schools were 
built upon the sand, so suddenly did population shift 
with fresh discoveries of gold. In April, 1848, a public 
school was opened in a tent at San Francisco. The 
next year, a State Constitution was formed ; and, in 
this community of gold-hunters, provision was made by 
law for the proceeds of 500,000 acres of land as a perpet- 
ual school-fund. In 1850, California had 8 schools, 7 
teachers, 219 pupils ; in 1860, 598 schools, 816 teachers, 
28,651 pupils; in 1870, 1,548 schools, 2,444 teachers, 
85,507 pupils. Add to these private schools, and the 
number of pupils is 100,000, the yearly cost $2,500,000, 
the value of school-property over $4,000,000. Of incipi- 
ent colleges and seminaries the State has even more than 
enough, and her young university may yet become the 
light of the Pacific coast. Her topographical survey, with 
the memoirs of Whitney, Clarence King, and others, is of 
high scientific value; and her "Lick" Observatory will 
rival the best of the Old World. Her literature has pro- 
duced 150 volumes of native birth ; and among these are 
the names of Bret Harte, Joaquin Miller, and Herbert 
H. Bancroft, whose great work on the " Native Races of 
the Pacific States " has accomplished for the prehistoric 
times of America what George Bancroft's has done for 
the era of Christian civilization. In 1850, California had 
28 churches; in 1860, 293; and in 1870, 643 churches, 
with a property valued at $7,404,235, — some of them with 
buildings that would do credit to any city of the New 
World or the Old. One can by no means claim for Califor- 
nia a social paradise corresponding with her climate : but 
she has elements of culture that are unsurpassed ; homes 
of taste, literature, science, music, art ; and the best musi- 
cians and lecturers of Europe find their reward in the 
appreciative circles of that far-off coast. Carljie once 
warned us that we confounded the big with the great. 
We took the warning in good part, and gave heed to it ; 
and now the philosopher who can look beneath the sur- 
face sees in this triumph of education and religion over 
Mammon seated on his mountains of gold one "great, 
noble thing " that he can M loyally admire." 

There was a time when one of our own prophets l lifted 

i Dr. Horace Buslmell. 



THE NATIOX JUDGED BY ITS SELF-DEVELOPMENT. 209 

up the warning, that, in the rapid roll of emigration west- 
ward, " barbarism was our first danger : " the loose and 
lawless elements of society drifted to the frontier; and 
even decent, honest men grew coarse and vulgar in the 
constant struggle with Nature for a bare subsistence. 
Besides, there is something demoralizing in a life divided 
between attacks of the shakes and the Sioux. That 
frontier-life, with its rough cabins, rough men, rough sports, 
rough drinks, rough fights, would have sunk to downright 
barbarism had it only been let alone long enough to act 
itself out ; but it was not let alone. No garrisons were 
sent to check and tame it, as Russia holds her frontiers in 
Asia; but behind this frontier-life, pushing it forward, 
was a Christian civilization, to which these rough-handed 
men were but hewers of wood and drawers of water, pre- 
paring in the wilderness a way for its coming. Since the 
Pacific coast has checked the movement westward, and the 
extinction of slavery has suppressed the lust of conquest 
southward, 'the old land-fever has abated ; pioneer-life is 
hemmed in between two cordons of settled communities ; 
and though its traces linger here and there, and in some 
places it has left upon society an evil stain, it is steadily 
vanishing before the moral forces of civilization. The 
march of American emigration across the continent has 
no analogy with the old westward migration of Oriental 
tribes. It has ever been the advance of a civilized and 
Christian people to secure the continent to the highest 
form of society. Bryant has pictured it in his prairies : — 

" I hear 
The sound of that advancing multitude 
Which soon shall fill these deserts. From the ground 
Come up the laugh of children, the soft voice 
Of maidens, and the sweet and solemn hymn 
Of sabbath worshippers. " 

Every new State, as it has been organized, has made pro- 
vision for the education of children at the public cost. 
We still have need of the obligatory school-system of 
Prussia, — in this feature the best in the world. But in 
the United States the people have voluntarily cared for 
education to such a degree, that over seven million chil- 



210 CENTENNIAL OF AMEEICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

clren are enrolled in the public schools; and these schools 
have an income, from endowment, taxation, and public 
funds, of sixty-five million dollars. Some forty years ago, 
this people of "cotton-crops and Indian-corn and dollars" 
had a surplus of several millions in the national treasury. 
What did they do with it? They did not hoard it in 
vaults as a provision for war, nor bury it in mounds and 
fortifications. ' They did not speculate with it to win more, 
nor use it to purchase other lands. They put it into 
funds for schools, that the woodman, the fisherman, the 
miner, might learn to read " Sartor Resartus." This is no 
suggestion of fancy. Two of the prettiest episodes of 
American working-life are told by two of the most human 
of our poets. One is a scene that Lowell witnessed in a 
railroad-car, where a knot of working-men crowded to- 
gether to listen to a comrade : — 

" He spoke of Burns : men rude and rough 
Pressed round to hear the praise of one 
Whose heart was made of manly, simple stuff, 
As homespun as their own. 

And, when he read, they forward leaned, 
Drinking, with thirsty hearts and ears, 

His brook-like songs whom glory never weaned 
From humble smiles and tears. 

Slowly there grew a tender awe, 

Sun-like, o'er faces brown and hard, 
As if in him who read they felt and saw 

Some presence of the bard. 

It was a sight for sin and wrong 

And slavish tyranny to see, — 
A sight to make our faith more pure and strong 

In high humanity. 



All that hath been majestical 
In life or death, since time began, 

Is native in the simple heart of all, — 
The angel heart of man. 

And thus among the untaught poor 
Great deeds and feelings find a home, 

That cast in shadow all the golden lore 
Of classic Greece and Rome." 



THE NATION JUDGED BY ITS SELF-DEVELOPMENT. 211 

The other is Bret Harte's picture of the story of Little 
Nell in the miner's camp, his own offering to the tomb 
of Dickens : — 

" And then, while round them shadows gathered faster, 
And as the firelight fell, 
He read aloud the book wherein the master 
Had writ of ' Little Nell.' 

Perhaps 'twas boyish fancy ; for the reader 

Was youngest of them all : 
But, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar 

A silence seemed to fall. 

The fir-trees, gathering closer in the shadows, 

Listened in every spray ; 
While the whole camp with Nell on English meadows 

Wandered and lost their way. 



Lost is that camp, and wasted all its fire, 

And he who wrought that spell. 
Ah ! towering pine and stately Kentish spire, 

Ye have one tale to tell. 

Lost is that camp; but let its fragrant story 

Blend with the breath that thrills 
With hop-vines' incense all the pensive glory 

That fills the Kentish hills. 

And, on that grave where English oak and holly 

And laurel wreaths intwine, 
Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly 

This spray of Western pine." 

That coarse, homespun civilization that Dickens held 
up to ridicule, true to the inborn gentlemaniiness of its 
nature, made him the honored guest of the camp-fire, and 
paid to his genius the tribute of honest manly feeling, 
with more than critics' praise. Indeed, the United States 
in re Dickens is a faithful picture of American character 
and life. No doubt we made fools of ourselves in the first 
reception of Dickens ; and he avenged himself of our gush- 
ing, boisterous, hand-shaking welcome, by caricaturing our 
foibles, ridiculing our manners, ignoring our finer tastes, 
and suppressing our virtues. But the folly was not all on 
one side. It is an offence against truth for a traveller, in 
describing a foreign people, to take a lot of incidents, each 



212 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

of which may be true in itself, and put these together so 
as to make a false story, and give that out as the whole 
story. It is an offence against delicacy to caricature cer- 
tain peculiarities of manners in a people so as to disparage 
their true refinement in the arts and amenities of life. 
Suppose my sense of good-breeding is offended by the free 
use of pocketrcombs and pocket-handkerchiefs, the loud 
clamor of voices, and the uncouth handling of knives and 
toothpicks, at a German table d'hote: it would mark ill- 
breeding in me to deride the culture of a people because 
they do not meet my notions of table etiquette. Worst 
of all, it is an offence against honor to accept one's hospi- 
tality, and then publish derisive comments upon the host. 
All these offences Mr. Dickens was guilty of in his 
"American Notes" and in "Martin Chuzzlewit." 1 Since 
his partial revelation of himself in " David Copperfield," 
and the full unveiling of his life by Mr. Forster, we know 
better how to apologize for offences in 1842 that we so 
heartily condoned by the second reception in 1867. In 
early life, Dickens had no opportunity of mingling with 
gentlemen, or of observing and acquiring what belongs to 
the proprieties of social intercourse. And how seldom, 
indeed, in all his writings, does one find the true lady or 
the perfect gentleman ! Suddenly his genius dazzled the 
world, and its reflection dazed his own brain. Lifted into 
genteel society before he was ripe for it, his head was 
turned with vanity ; and in this mood, at thirty, he went 
to the United States, the guest of a nation already made 
wild over the " Pickwick Papers," " Oliver Twist," "Nich- 
olas Nickleby," the " Boz Sketches," "Old Curiosity 
Shop," and " Barnaby Rudge." Dickens was even more 
widely read and more intensely popular in America than 
in England. His name was a household word. In my 
college set, every fellow was dubbed with some title out of 

1 Macaulay did not disguise Lis contempt for the American Notes. He 
wrote to Napier, declining to review the book in the Edinburgh. "'I 
cannot praise it, though it contains a few lively dialogues and descrip- 
tions; for it seems to me to he, on the whole, a failure. It is written like 
the worst parts of Humphrey's Clock. What is meant to he easy and 
sprightly is vulgar and flippant, as in the first two pages. What is meant 
to be hue is a great deal too tine for me, as the description of the Fall of 
Niagara. ... In short, I pronounce the book, in spite of some gleams of 
genius, at once frivolous and dull." 



THE NATION JUDGED BY ITS SELF-DEVELOPMENT. 213 

" Pickwick : " we even had our Mr. Winkle, who showed 
himself a " humbug " on the skating-pond. I received 
early copies of the " Papers " from England ; and my room 
was crowded for readings and extemporized actings, that 
shook the college-halls with mirth. Not a student but 
would have run miles to see and cheer the author. Just 
such boyish enthusiasm seized upon the nation when it 
was known that Dickens was coming. Well, he came, 
expecting to be received like the Great Mogul ; and we 
took him for a hale fellow, — a sort of cross between Mr. 
Pickwick and Sam Weller, — and showed very little re- 
spect for his privacy. We ran after him in the streets ; 
we blocked the entrance to his hotel ; we gave him balls, 
which, in the promiscuous jamming of all sorts of people 
and of toilets that one would not care to come so near to 
again, were like subscription-balls at the Opera House in 
Berlin ; and, worst of all, we inflicted upon him a huge 
quantity of American after-dinner eloquence. All this 
was very naughty of us, and very silly ; yet it was an 
honest enthusiasm for genius. But Mr. Dickens, alas ! had 
come to America, not to enhance his praise, but to enrich 
his pocket. Well, we owed him much ; and it was shabby 
of us not to have paid it. But we were not altogether 
guilty. There was no international copyright (which is a 
monstrous wrong to authors) ; and some American publish- 
ers had pirated Dickens's books, just as English publishers 
since have re-issued American books, by wholesale, without 
following the improved method of respectable American 
houses in giving a handsome honorarium in lieu of legal 
copyright. 1 Had Mr. Dickens trusted to our sense of 
honor, we should have sent him home with such a national 
testimonial as never author had received ; or, better still, 
our leading men would have used his popularity for urging 

1 Three books of mine were reprinted in England by different publish- 
ers, neither of whom had the grace to send me even a presentation-copy. 
Once, in London, I went to a house that had reprinted one of my books ; and, 
after buying half a dozen copies of this pirated edition, I introduced my- 
self as the author to the publisher, who was standing by. With some con- 
fusion, he offered to present me with the copies I had just paid for; but I 
declined that sort of recognition of an author's rights, and never received 
any other. Still the English law of copyright is more just and liberal than 
the American; and some English publishers follow the example of the 
more honorable Atnerican publishers, in paying a royalty to a foreign 
author who has not secured a copyright. 



214 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

a law of international copyright. But Dickens abused the 
hospitality of his public and private entertainers by lec- 
turing us on our shortcomings in this matter ; by babbling 
of his claims, even to the extent of using his welcome at 
Washington in urging that Congress should pass a copy- 
right law for the protection of foreign authors. On re- 
turning to London, Mr. Dickens denied that he " had gone 
to America as a kind of missionary in the cause of inter- 
national copyright." * Of course he did not go as a mis- 
sionary for others, or for a cause. His philanthropy, public 
spirit, or sense of justice, did not take on the " mission- 
ary" type: but he did look out for number one; he did 
talk copyright everywhere, and make everybody under- 
stand that he wanted to be paid for his books, — as most 
assuredly he ought to have been. Now, though the Ameri- 
can people have a weakness for money and the possessors 
of money, they thoroughly despise a man who avows that 
he is after money in all that he says and does. Their re- 
gard for Mammon may be coarse and vulgar, but is not apt 
to be mean and mercenary : so, when we found what Mr. 
Dickens was after, we were vexed and disgusted, and we 
dropped him. He went home mortified and mad, and 
abused us. Some things he said of us were true as well as 
funny, and we laughed at ourselves ; some were sharp, but 
merited, and in Chinese fashion we thanked the corrector, 
while we felt the rod : but a great part of his caricature 
was so ludicrously libellous, that the author stood impaled 
in his own pillory, and there we pelted him. It had not 
occurred to Mr. Dickens how he depreciated himself as an 
author in sneering at a people who showed their literary 
taste by buying his books by the million ; but, when he 
saw himself served up in his own characters, he rather 
wished he had let them alone. Moreover, American pub- 
lishers had made him voluntary proposals of a percentage 
on sales ; but, alas ! both sales and fame had collapsed 
together. Mr. Forster fills his twent} T -seventh chapter 
with " Chuzzlewit Disappointments," which he tries to 
explain away ; but he says of the Americans, " Though 
an angry, they are a good-humored and a very placable 
people." It was not long before we began to feel, that, in 

1 Forster' s Life, cliap. xxvi. 



THE NATION JUDGED BY ITS SELF-DEVELOPMENT. 215 

pouting at Dickens, we were punishing ourselves. We 
wanted to laugh with him once more, and so began to 
laugh even at his exaggerated pictures of American soci- 
ety. A quarter of a century passed by : Mr. Dickens had 
grown more to the manners of a gentleman, and had 
ripened and mellowed under his experiences of life. The 
American people, too, had improved in manners and cul- 
ture, not, however, because of Mr. Dickens's castigations, 
but through the upward working of those moral and spirit- 
ual forces that underlie our civilization, and which Mr. 
Dickens had neither the training to discover, nor the apti- 
tude to appreciate. Ruskin has put forth an ideal society 
in his " Company of St. George," in which the best cul- 
ture in manners, art, and nobleness, shall not only be asso- 
ciated with, but grow out of, the tilling of the soil and 
other homely manual labor ; and he has even sought to 
induce his art-students at Oxford to take their physical 
exercise in trundling the barrow, and handling the spade. 
If, now, one should come upon a squad of such art-laborers 
in their working-dress, and rate their culture by the com- 
post they were using as a fertilizer, he would be as wise as 
Dickens was, when, in 1842, he estimated the capacity of 
Americans for culture by seeing them yet in the sweat 
and toil of their material fight with, yes, and their most 
"material" conquest over, Nature. Well, in 1867 the 
two parties met again. Mr. Dickens had come to repair 
his fortunes by public readings. The American people 
went to greet him as a benefactor, and to enjoy the intel- 
lectual treat of hearing the master interpret his works. 
At first, he was a little nervous as to the reception he 
might meet. But the tone of the American people was 
faithfully expressed by a New- York journal, which said, 
" Even in England, Dickens is less known than here ; and, 
of the millions here who treasure every word he has 
written, there are tens of thousands who would make a 
large sacrifice to see and hear the man who has made 
happy so many hours. Whatever sensitiveness there once 
was to adverse or sneering criticism, the lapse of a quarter 
of a century, and the profound significance of a great 
war, have modified or removed." 

The tickets to his readings were at a high figure ; but 



216 CENTENNIAL OF AMEBIC AN INDEPENDENCE. 

the rush to hear him was unprecedented. He said of his 
audiences, " American people are so accustomed to take 
care of themselves, that one of these immense audiences 
will fall into their places with an ease amazing to a 
frequenter of St. James's Hall; and the certainty with 
which they are all in before I go on is a very acceptable 
mark of respect." He often wrote of his reception as 
magnificent ; his audiences as fine, appreciative, swayed by 
every sentiment and emotion of the piece, — moved now to 
laughter, and now to tears. This was the people whom he 
had derided. They came to fill his heart with love, his 
ears with applause, his pockets with gold. They decked 
his table with the choicest flowers ; they honored his 
birthday with costly gifts : and, after every reading, 
Mr. Dickens wrote home, " We had above four hundred 
and fifty pounds English in the house last night." " We 
have not yet had in it less than four hundred and thirty 
pounds per night." "A charming audience; no dissatis- 
faction whatever at the raised prices ; rounds upon rounds 
of applause. All the foremost men and their families had 
taken tickets. A small place to read in : three hundred 
pounds in it." At Rochester he had " above two hun- 
dred pounds English ; " " at Syracuse, three hundred and 
seventy-five pounds odd." He has " a misgiving that the 
great excitement about the President's impeachment will 
damage his receipts ; " but he remits three thousand 
pounds, then ten thousand pounds, and winds up with a 
total of one hundred thousand dollars. All this Mr. 
Forster has seen fit to give to the world ; and the world 
will judge on which side of these andience-rooms were the 
tokens of refined culture, and on which those of a merce- 
nary and material spirit, — whether with the hearers, who 
thought nothing of high prices for an hour of intellectual 
enjoyment, who sat silent, respectful, earnest, laughing, 
ciying, applauding, under the play of literary taste and 
feeling ; or with the reader, who was coolly counting them 
at so many pounds in his pocket. 

But to the credit of Mr. Dickens be it said, that, at a 
farewell dinner in New York, he made the amende honora- 
ble : he used the occasion to bear his testimony to the 
changes of twenty-five years, — the rise of vast new cities ; 



THE NATION JUDGED BY ITS SELF-DEVELOPMENT. 217 

growth in the graces and amenities of life ; much improve- 
ment in the press, essential to every other advance ; and 
changes in himself, leading to opinions more deliberately 
formed. He promised his kindly entertainers that no 
copy of his "Notes " or his " Chuzzlewit " should in future 
be issued by him without accompanying mention of the 
changes to which he had referred that night ; of the 
politeness, delicacy, sweet temper, hospitality, and consid- 
eration in all ways, for which he had to thank them ; and 
of his gratitude for the respect shown, during all his visit, 
to the privacy enforced upon him by the nature of his 
work and the condition of his health. 1 So ends the 
affair of the United States in re Dickens. The case was 
dismissed from court, the parties to divide the costs. 

I have dwelt thus long upon Carlyle and Dickens, 
because, as impugners of American society, they were 
entitled to respectful consideration, and because their 
criticisms have gone over the world, and are fixed in 
literature ; but chiefly because, by the analysis of their 
criticisms in the light of facts, one sees in American soci- 
ety a kind of moral greatness of which Carlyle knows 
little, and a spiritual culture of which Dickens knew less. 2 

The source of these it is easy to unfold. I have alluded 
to the provision for popular education made by the State 
governments, in part by general funds, in part by yearly 
taxes levied upon school-districts. This the State does of 
right and of necessity, since the safety of political society 
in a free State hinges upon the intelligence and virtue of 
its citizens. As a rule, knowledge favors virtue and 
order. As Rousseau said, " To open the schools is to shut 
the prisons : " hence the State must require and provide 
that every citizen shall have knowledge of his duties as a 

1 Forster, chap. 60. 

2 The names of Carlyle and Dickens represent genius ; and what they 
said of America had at least the merit of raciness and originality. But a 
generation afterwards, in the chair of history in a university, — where one 
has a right to look for accuracy of knowledge, depth of wisdom, breadth, 
candor, and liberality of opinion, — to encounter narrowness, ignorance, 
bigotry, and hear the stale phrases of Irving and Carlyle, "the almighty 
dollar," and " America has produced no men," repeated and repeated with- 
out the flavor of wit or the smack of originality, — this is simply pitiful. 
Such talk American students hear from more than one professor in Ger- 
many; but the dignity of philosophic history and the nobility of the world 
of letters forbid any more speciilc notice of a style of criticism already 
in its dotage. 



218 CENTENjtflAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

member of civil society. But virtue and religion, lying 
within the domain of will and conscience, the State, by the 
American theory, leaves to the training of the family and 
the Church, with entire freedom of choice and action to 
the individual, except so far as his acts may be injurious 
to society. Now, it is in this moral sphere that the 
renovating, purifying, saving energy of American life has 
shown itself in 'results that are without parallel in the his- 
tory of Christendom. One must master this mighty, 
inner, untiring force, — the progressiveness, rather the 
aggressiveness, of a free religion, — before he can begin to 
understand how American society has made the material 
conquest of a continent without becoming itself material- 
ized ; how it has amassed enormous wealth without being 
mammonized. 

New England, for instance, has among ourselves, and to 
some extent abroad, a sort of Nazarene reputation for 
" Yankeeism," — a shrewd, sharp, calculating, close, per- 
haps overreaching, habit in money-matters ; yet it would 
be hard to find a community more removed from the spirit 
of mammonism, or more happily combining with the prac- 
tical and material the ideal, the spiritual, the aesthetic, 
the philanthropic. How many good things in theology, 
poetry, science, letters, patriotism, beneficence, have come 
out of that Nazareth ! No doubt the struggle for existence 
on the hard soil and in the hard climate of New England, 
and with the competitions of trade and manufactures, gives 
to the average New-Englander a sort of shrewd and wary 
look, and a seemingly tenacious habit, until, perchance, he 
finds himself enrolled among " the solid men of Boston," 
and relaxes with the consciousness of being at " the hub 
of the universe." No doubt, too, the driving business- 
ways of New York and Chicago compel every one to be 
smart who would get on. Indeed, with too many of our 
countrymen, smartness is the standard virtue, and lack of 
gumption the one damning sin. An English friend told 
me, that, going out one evening from his hotel in an 
American town, he pitched headlong into a ditch that had 
been excavated for gas-pipes, and left without warning 
lights. Next morning, at breakfast, he denounced in true 
English style the "beastly" neglect of the authorities: 



THE NATION JUDGED BY ITS SELF-DEVELOPMENT. 219 

whereupon a quaint Yankee at the table gave him this 
counsel : " I tell you what, stranger, if you're going to 
travel round in this country, you must learn to use your 
intellects. I've been in England, and know how you do 
things there. When you go to the railway-station, one 
policeman sees that the cabman doesn't cheat you; 
another then takes you on his arm to the booking-office, 
and sees that you get the right ticket and the right 
change ; then a porter lifts you in his arms, and puts 
you into the carriage ; then the guard comes, and hopes 
you're comfortable, and locks the door so that you can't 
fall out. But when you go to a railroad-station here, and 
see six trains ready to start at once for nobody knows 
where, then you've got to stir round, and use your intel- 
lects ; and I tell you, stranger, if you can't learn to use 
your intellects, then you'd better go home, where there's 
always somebody to keep you from tumbling into ditches." 
My friend told me he profited much by this advice in his 
further travels. This habit of self-dependence, of finding 
or making his own way, obtains in the American from the 
news-boy and boot-black to the party politician, either of 
whom may have hopes of the presidency, if only he can 
"get on." I can well fancy that this national smartness 
is not relished by foreigners, and not understood by them. 
But this activity of intellect in practical e very-day life 
does not suppress the tastes, the affections, the humanities, 
in the higher, nobler life of the soul. 

Pere Hyacinthe, after a tour in New England, said he 
had remarked in every town three institutions that epito- 
mized American society, — the bank, the school, and the 
church. A true picture. And you see the intellectual and 
the spiritual are two to one against the material, — the 
bank the storehouse of gains and savings, the school and 
the church the distributing reservoirs of what is freely 
taken from the bank, and given to these educating and 
spiritualizing forces of society. 

" The Americans," says De Tocqueville, " show by their 
practice that they feel the high necessity of imparting 
morality to democratic communities by means of religion. 
... In the United States, on the first day of every week, the 
trading and working life of the nation seems suspended ; 



220 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

all noises cease ; a deep tranquillity, say rather the solemn 
cairn of meditation, succeeds the turmoil of the week ; and 
the soul resumes possession and contemplation of itself. 
Upon this clay the marts of traffic are deserted : every 
member of the community, accompanied by his children, 
goes to church, where he listens to strange language, 
which would seem unsuited to his ear." This last ex- 
pression shows that even the philosophical acumen of 
De Tocqueville had failed to penetrate to the secret of 
religious life in America. That is no " strange language " 
to which the American banker, merchant, farmer, me- 
chanic, listens when he goes to church on Sunday : it is 
the language he was accustomed in childhood to hear 
from his parents ; the language that perhaps he himself 
has used in his own family every day of the week at 
morning prayer ; the lessons that he inculcates to his 
children, — " of the finer pleasures which belong to virtue 
alone, and of the true happiness which attends it." It is 
not on Sunday alone, as De Tocqueville imagined, " that 
the American steals an hour from himself, and laying aside 
for a while the petty passions which agitate his life, and 
the ephemeral interests which engross it, strays at once 
into an ideal world, where all is great, eternal, and pure." 
Thousands upon thousands of the busiest men in America 
do this every day with undeviating regularity. This is 
their life, — in that ideal world ; and they bring from this 
springs and motives to action in the world of affairs. 
Hence these same busy men are to be seen on Sundays 
teaching the poor in mission-schools, on week-days attend- 
ing prayer-meetings and committees of benevolent socie- 
ties : hence these same rich men are found with their 
check-books always open to the calls of Christian work 
and duty. 

I have spoken of the mass of pauperism, vice, and crime, 
that immigration pours in upon New York. But see, now, 
how Christian zeal and beneficence seek to purify and 
renovate this. In addition to hospitals, infirmaries, refor- 
matories, supported by taxation, and to special charities 
of every name endowed by private munificence, or sus- 
tained by yearly donations, the whole city is divided into 
mission-districts, and the several religious communions 



THE NATION JUDGED BY ITS SELF-DEVELOPMENT. 221 

unite in sustaining missions and free churches for the 
poor. There are in the city a hundred and forty mission- 
stations, many of which have connected with them indus- 
trial schools, reading-rooms, infirmaries, and, in winter, the 
systematic distribution of food and fuel. In addition to 
these missions, there are, in New York, two hundred and 
forty Protestant churches, with sittings for two hundred 
and fifty thousand persons, while the missions will accom- 
modate fifty thousand more ; and a total of three hundred 
thousand church-sittings are a large provision for the non- 
Catholic inhabitants, which may be estimated at six hundred 
thousand in a population of a million. The valuation of 
these churches is twenty million dollars. Notwithstanding 
the rapid increase of population since 1830, and the enor- 
mous advance in the cost of building-sites, the churches have 
kept pace with the growth of the city ; and to-day there is 
a Protestant church in New York for every 1,578 of the 
Protestant population. Still more striking are the results 
of evangelistic zeal in the country at large. From 1850 
to 1870 the population of the United States increased 
sixty-six per cent, and in the same period the provision 
for the religious wants of the people increased ninety per 
cent ; so that to-day there is one evangelical minister to 
every seven hundred and ninety-one persons. The evan- 
gelical church-property is valued at three hundred and 
fifty million dollars, and the American people pay yearly 
for the support of their churches about fifty million dol- 
lars. He who reflects that all this is done of free will, 
without taxation or compulsion, or aid in any form from 
the State, will see that a people who have given money 
for church-extension to a degree that has outstripped the 
growth of the population are not given to the sordid pur- 
suit of this world, and do not count material good the 
chief end of life. 

There are forms of religion that repress certain forms 
of culture. But in the United States the prevailing tone 
of spiritual life has always favored the highest type of 
mental and social development. " The word of ambition 
at the present day," says Emerson, " is culture." l This 
is indeed a most pretentious word, and is uttered with a 

1 Conduct of Life, Essay IV. 



222 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

most pretentious air by many who would be sorely puz- 
zled to give a definition of the term, and still more puzzled, 
on hearing it defined, to feel themselves wanting in the 
first rudiments of the thing. Mr. Emerson discourses of 
it as something that shall at last " absorb the chaos and 
gehenna, — convert the Furies into Muses, and the hells 
into benefit ; " but he fails to tell us what this enchant- 
ment is, or how to be attained. His nearest approach to a 
definition is this, — which is like many another riddle from 
the same oracle, — " Culture is the suggestion from cer- 
tain best thoughts, that a man has a range of affinities 
through which he can modulate the violence of any mas- 
ter-tones that have a droning preponderance in his scale, 
and succor him against himself." In plainer words, this 
means that culture gives balance to one's powers, and 
represses his excesses and conceits through wider knowl- 
edge, sympathy, diversity, experience. But these are 
fruits or manifestations of culture, and do not acquaint us 
with the art or its methods. Mr. Matthew Arnold, who 
preaches culture as the new gospel for humanity, defines 
his theme with tantalizing vagueness : it is "a pursuit of 
our total perfection by means of getting to know, in all the 
matters which most concern us, the best winch has been 
thought and said in the world, and, through this knowl- 
edge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our 
stock notions and habits." ! He is a little more precise 
when he speaks of culture as leading us " to conceive of 
true human perfection as an harmonious perfection, develop- 
ing all sides of our humanity; and as a general perfection, 
developing all parts of our society: " 2 "Perfection is an 
harmonious expansion of all the powers which make the 
beauty and worth of human nature, and is not consistent 
with the over-development of any one power at the ex- 
pense of the rest." 3 Hence " culture places human per- 
fection in an internal condition, in the growth and pre- 
dominance of our humanity proper, as distinguished from 
our animality." 4 But all this is rhetorical description, 
not philosophical definition ; and Mr. Arnold recurs con- 
tinually to his favorite figure of " the play of conscious- 

i Culture and Anarchy, Preface, x. 2 Ibid., xiii. 

3 Ibid., p. 13. 4 Ibid., p. 11. 



THE NATION JUDGED BY ITS SELF-DEVELOPMENT. 223 

ness upon stock notions and habits." The figure is good 
as far as it goes. But planting your garden with the 
best, and watering it well, is not the whole of culture : if 
it has been " stocked " with worthless roots and weeds, 
these must be exterminated by something more effective 
than a fresh stream. Besides, culture does not begin and 
end in thoughts, notions, habits: there are principles, 
motives, feelings, to be formed or directed aright. 

Wilhelm von Humboldt marks a fine gradation in the 
progress of society : " Civilization is the humanizing of 
peoples in their outward institutions and customs, and in 
the inner disposition that has regard to these : culture 
adds to this ennobling of the social condition the pursuit 
of the sciences and the fine arts ; but still higher is Bil- 
dung" 1 And Fichte says, " All Bildung aims at produ- 
cing a stable, definitive, and permanent being (or state 
of being). Did it not aim at such a state, it would be not 
Bildung, but an aimless play." 2 For this Bildung, this 
formative process, the English has no exact equivalent ; 
but the term " culture " covers the whole ground, if we 
keep in view its etymology and the subject-matter to 
which it is applied. Oultus is labor carefully bestowed 
for improvement, for developing nature, and, if need be, 
refining upon nature, so as to produce the best. Hence 
the term is applicable to any thing capable of being im- 
proved by care or training, be it the soil, a flower, a fruit, 
a tree, an animal, a man, a people ; but, whatever skilled 
labor may accomplish for improvement, the thing culti- 
vated remains as to its essential nature the same, — either 
land, plant, animal, man, or society. It is obvious, then, 
that the grade of culture is to be estimated not only by 
outward results produced in any given direction, but by 
the nature aiad value of the material or substance wrought 
upon ; as, for instance, the civilization of a savage people is 
an achievement of a higher order than the domestication 
of their wild animals. The definitions or descriptions of 
culture given by Emerson and others are, therefore, too 
limited, in that they restrict culture to knowledge and 
manners ; whereas the whole man is properly the subject 
of culture, and the man centres in that spiritual nature, 

1 Kawispr. 1, xxxvii. 2 Eichte, 7, 281. 



224 CENTENNIAL OE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

that positive definitive being, of which thoughts, tastes, 
habits, are but functions, predicates, or appendages. The 
true culture of man must begin with this inner spiritual 
nature, this reasonable, conscionable soul, and proceed from 
this outwards, as the cultured soul, by its own higher 
capacities, aims, and affinities, shall appropriate to itself as 
a garment all worthy knowledge, graces, arts, attainments. 
It is true that one cannot cultivate a science or an art 
without, in a sense, cultivating the soul ; but to spend the 
labor of life in cultivating the science or art as the sum 
and end of life is to furbish and adorn the case, but leave 
the diamond within uncut, unpolished, unseen, or per- 
chance, when seen, found to be no diamond, but a mass of 
uncrystallized carbon. What we want of culture is, that 
it shall bestow its thoughtful and careful labor upon the 
proper subject ; that the man shall be wrought out and 
brought out in what Mr. Arnold has fitly styled his " total 
perfection," and this not simply by knowing the best in 
all the matters which most concern him, but by having 
the best, doing the best, being the best, possible for him- 
self and others. I would define culture as that condition 
of man and of society in which all capabilities for the 
noble, the beautiful, the true, the good, are brought into 
supreme exercise, to the exclusion of the unsightly and the 
evil, and in harmonious adjustment for the perfection of 
the individual and the whole ; and the process of culture 
is the training of man's spiritual nature to this end. 

Looking thus at man as the prime subject of all culture, 
we see at once that materialism would block the way to 
the truest and noblest culture by discarding the spiritual 
nature, — which is capable itself of the purest refinement, 
and also of refining external nature from itself, — and 
substituting for this a mere atomical organism, of which 
thought, consciousness, sentiment, are but functions, and 
which, so far from answering to Fichte's determinate and 
imperishable Sein, has but a frail and perishable hold upon 
existence, amid the flux and reflux of atoms. However 
far such culture may be carried, however much it may 
refine upon its material, it cannot change the nature of that 
material ; and the sum total of materialistic culture is the 
polishing of one set of atoms by another, like grinding 



THE NATION JUDGED BY ITS SELF-DEVELOPMENT. 225 

clown the surface of a diamond by grains of emery. Such 
culture makes of man a statue without a soul, and of society 
a temple without a divinity. And, materialism aside, this 
is pretty much the limit of aU forms of culture that rest 
in knowledge, in the restricted and unphilosophical sense 
in which some physicists use that term, making intelli- 
gence the only thing in man that is susceptible or worthy 
of culture. 

But those three short, simple questions of Kant, touching 
the ideal of the highest good, unveil to us in man capacities 
for ethical, spiritual, and aesthetic culture far above the 
range of physical objects and materials. " Every interest 
of my reason (the speculative as well as the practical) is 
united in the three following questions : (1) What can I 
know ? (2) What ought I to do ? (3) What may I hope ? " 
Of the last he says, u All hoping looks toward happiness, 
and, in regard to the practical and the law of morality, is 
precisely the same as are knowing and the law of nature 
in regard to the theoretical knowledge of things." And 
he clinches the point by saying, that " without a God, 
and a world as yet to us invisible, but hoped for, the 
glorious ideas of morality are indeed objects of approba- 
tion and admiration, but not springs of purpose and of 
action, since they do not fill out the whole end which is 
natural and necessary to every rational being, and is even 
determined a priori by pure reason itself." 1 It is this 
spiritual nature in its totality that is the subject of cul- 
ture in man ; and that culture is yet rude and unfinished 
that rests in arts and sciences which cultivate the eye, the 
hand, the ear, — a culture that furnishes the chambers of 
the cerebrum, but does not penetrate to the shrine of the 
soul, or rather come forth from that clothed with a divine 
beauty and majesty. 

Were I called upon to select from the whole range of 
literature the man whose writings evince the highest soul- 
culture, I should name the apostle John as seen in his 
Gospel, his Epistles, and his Apocalypse. John wrote no 
system of philosophy ; but in his Gospel there is a philoso- 
phy so transcendently high, that criticism has sought to 
deprive him of its authorship, and transfer this to a trained 

1 Kant, Des Kanons der reinen Vernunf t. zweiter Absclmitt. 



226 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

school of Platonists. John wrote no poetry; but where 
in Dante or Milton have we such grandeur of imagination 
as in the Apocalypse ? l John seems not to have been con- 
versant, as was Paul, with belles-lettres ; but where in liter- 
ature have we finer examples of the delicate in style, the 
pure and refined in feeling, than in his second and third 
Epistles? John held no painter's pencil ; but what artist 
has yet rivalled his New Jerusalem, swinging there in mid- 
heaven, with its walls of crystal, and gates of pearl ? 
John composed no symphony ; but what music charms us 
from his celestial choirs ! John gathered no museums of 
science ; but where do the precious stones of earth appear 
so glorious as where jasper and amethyst, sapphire and 
sardonyx, emerald and topaz, are set as foundations in the 
city of God ? What form of culture was not possible to 
this cultured soul, — and this the soul of a fisherman! 
No mind has yet outreached the thought of John, no 
heart yet fathomed his love. Art pictures him as the type 
of manly beauty graced with woman's tenderness ; and 
history tells us he was " the disciple whom Jesus loved," 
and to whom he intrusted his mother. 

Purity reflecting the image of the Divine, perfection 
reproducing the love of the Divine, — is there any thing 
nobler or richer than these ? How meagre the culture 
that begins and ends in ignoring these ! Xow, it was a 
peculiarity of American society, and especially of New- 
England society, which did so much to stamp and shape 
the nation, that it began in this royal valuation of the 
soul, and set its culture above all price. Because of its 
intrinsic worth, and because of the freedom it should have 
in religion and in political action, the soul should be 
trained in knowledge and virtue, and, through its affini- 
ties with the spiritual and immortal, be cultivated to the 
highest nobleness of beincr. As I have before shown of 
liberty, that in America religion was its spring and sup- 

i The genuineness of the fourth Gospel I have discussed in my The- 
ology of Christ. Now that the Tuhingen School has died out in Germany, 
it is not worth while to revive the question here. An amusing episode of 
that controversy is, however, worth recording. An English critic, who 
had demonstrated to his own satisfaction that the same pen could not have 
produced two compositions so different as John's Gospel and the Apoca- 
lypse, actually attempted to prove that the author of the Novum Organou 
wrote also the plays of Shakspeare ! 



THE NATION JUDGED BY ITS SELF-DEVELOPMENT. 227 

port, so was it of learning also. Two of the oldest col- 
leges in the United States, Harvard and Yale, now grown 
to be universities, were founded with the prime object 
of saving the churches from the evil of an uneducated 
clergy. Can history show a more beautiful example of 
religion in support of culture than was seen in the Colony 
of Massachusetts Bay on the twenty-eighth . day of Octo- 
ber, 1636 ? It was a troublous time. The Colony was but 
seven j^ears old. Its spirit of freedom had roused the jeal- 
ousy of England, and occasion had been sought to revoke 
its charter. " Provision had hardly been made for the 
first wants of life, — habitations, food, clothing, and 
churches. Walls, roads, and bridges were yet to be 
built. The power of England stood in attitude to strike. 
A desperate war with the natives had already begun." 1 
Yet in these critical circumstances the legislature voted 
to found a college, and to this end appropriated a sum 
" equivalent to the Colony tax for a year." Among the 
leading men in that infant Colony were John Winthrop 
of Trinity College, Cambridge ; Hugh Peter, also of 
Trinity, Cambridge, afterwards, one of Cromwell's chap- 
lains ; Harry Vane of Oxford, son of the privy council- 
lor, who also returned to England, became a leader in the 
Long Parliament, and, like Peter, was beheaded by 
Charles II., because, said the king, " he is too dangerous 
a man to let live if we can honestly put him out of the 
way ; " John Humphrey, eminent for his gifts and learn- 
ing, son-in-law of the Earl of Lincoln ; Simon Bradstreet 
of Emanuel College, Cambridge ; John Cotton, fellow of 
Emanuel College, Cambridge, and for twenty years rector 
of the splendid Church of St. Botolph's, Boston, England ; 
Samuel Stone, also of Emmanuel College, Cambridge ; and 
Thomas' Hooker, a fellow of the same college. These are 
specimens of the men who at the first presided in the 
councils of the Massachusetts Colony, and ministered to 
its churches. They had brought with them all of learn- 
ing and culture that England possessed in the age that 
followed the lustrous reign of Elizabeth ; and they took 
the noble resolve to reproduce in the virgin forest, and 
beside the Indian wigwam, the clear Cambridge of their 

1 Palfrey, History of New England, i. 548. 



228 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

native land. The Assembly, which in 1636 voted to tax 
the Colony for a college, is said to be " the first body in 
which the people, by their representatives, ever gave their 
own money to found a place of education." 1 Now, that 
which moved them to care for literary culture was their 
concern for spiritual culture. Here is their own testimony : 
" After God had carried us safe to New England, and we 
had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our liveli- 
hood, reared convenient places for God's worship, and set- 
tled the civil government, one of the first things we longed 
for and looked after was to advance learning, and perpet- 
uate it to posterity, dreading to leave an illiterate minis- 
try to the churches when our present ministers should lie 
in the dust." 2 In a word, what Prussia has just now pro- 
vided for upon political grounds, — that all her clergy 
shall have a broad university training, — those settlers in 
the wilderness provided for upon spiritual grounds two 
hundred and forty years ago. 

The spirit of Massachusetts for liberal education ani- 
mated the other New-England Colonies. In 1643 a con- 
federation of these Colonies was formed for their mutual 
welfare and defence ; and among the first acts of this 
confederation Avas a recommendation that every family 
throughout the plantations should give yearly " the fourth 
part of a bushel of corn, or something equivalent thereto, 
to the maintenance of poor students at the college at 
Cambridge. How rich the harvest from those grains of 
corn! The wisdom and wit of Emerson, blending the 
Pundit with the Puritan, and Socrates with Swift; the 
mellifluous verse of Longfellow, touching the heart of 
humanity in every tongue ; the fine sense and feeling of 
Lowell in prose and poetry ; the humor of Holmes ; the 
dignity of Dana, Nestor of American poets ; the schol- 
arly eloquence of Buckingham, Everett, Winthrop ; the 
legal lore of Story the father,- and the chaste art of the 
son, alike with the chisel and the pen; the scientific 
breadth and accuracy of Peirce, whether exploring the 
skies or the seas ; the humane ethics of Channing and the 
Wares ; the philanthropic statesmanship of Sumner ; and 

1 Edward Everett, in Palfrey, i. 548. 

2 isew England's First-Fruits, 12. 



THE NATION JUDGED BY ITS SELF-DEVELOPMENT. 229 

that wealth of historic research in Sparks, Eliot, Palfrey, 
Prescott, Hiklreth, Ticknor, — whose portrait adorned the 
library of the late King of Saxony, — Motley, — whose 
portrait is the one favored picture in the private salon of 
the Queen of the Netherlands in her summer palace at the 
Hague, — Bancroft, who, having so enriched his country 
with the materials of her history, has imitated her early 
settlers in giving the material proceeds of his work to aid 
poor scholars at Cambridge, — these, and scores like 
these, are fruits of that pious provision for learning, in 
arts, sciences, and letters, two centuries and a half ago. 
What land of Europe has not been enriched by this New- 
England culture of the spiritual nature of man ? 

No less significant of the affinity of religion for culture 
was the act of a few ministers who came together in 
1700, each with an armful of books culled from his own 
library, and — with the simple formula, " I give these books 
for the founding of a college " — began what has grown to 
be the University at New Haven. And from Yale Col- 
lege what treasures of culture in learning and science 
have enriched mankind ! — Percival and Hillhouse among 
the poets ; Webster, Gibbs, Hadley, Salisbury, Whitney, 
among philologists, and especially Eli Smith, whose work 
in translating the Bible into Arabic placed him among 
the foremost Semitic scholars ; Dana the naturalist, hon- 
ored by scientific academies throughout the world ; Ed- 
wards, Taylor, and Porter, among philosophers ; Cal- 
houn, Woolsey, Evarts, among statesmen and legists ; 
Lyman Beecher, Dwight, Bacon, Bushnell (the last more 
widely read by men of thought than any recent theolo- 
gian). The mention of this name leads me to speak of 
one product of mind in New England that holds no. mean 
place among the philosophic systems of the world: I 
mean the distinctive New-England theology that is repre- 
sented by such names as Edwards, Hopkins, West, Bel- 
lamy, Emmons, Taylor, Park. This theology has dealt 
mainly with the questions of the human will, the origin 
of evil, the atonement, and the moral government of God ; 
and the whole literature of theology nowhere presents a 
theodicy more strongly marked with deep and keen meta- 
physical speculation, thorough exegesis, and cogent logic. 



230 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

The power of this theology in training the minds of men, 
when books were few, was sometimes wonderful. After 
the death of Dr. Bellamy, an old negro who had always 
attended on his preaching was asked how he liked the 
new minister. " H'm : he preach smart ; he make God 
big, bnt no so big as Massa Bellamy. Massa Bellamy — 
he make God Almighty awful hig ! " There was an instru- 
ment of soul-culture — the power of making spiritual 
things real, great, majestic — that took hold upon the 
rudest minds, and lifted these into the unseen and eter- 
nal ; and a mind that is not capable of realizing such 
things can no more judge of American culture than a 
blind man can judge of color. 

I come back to the proposition, that all true culture 
must have for its basis the spiritual nature in man. Why 
is it that Germany has enlisted the sympathies of enlight- 
ened and cultivated men throughout the world in her 
conflict with Ultramontanism ? It is because she would 
maintain for the human mind that freedom of thought and 
development that Luther won at the Reformation. But 
if _ there be no mind to be cultivated, — nothing but 
sciences, arts, and manners, — the strife is not worth our 
concern. Why is ecclesiastical tyranny the most hateful 
and hated of all ? Because it binds its chains upon the 
mind. Other tyrannies can be broken by force of will, 
by the uprising of mind ; but clerical tyranny palsies the 
will, and holds the soul in vassalage. The struggle with 
Vaticanism enlists my whole being, only because I look 
upon this as the emancipation of man's spiritual nature 
from worse than material bonds. Surely the Latin 
Church has not been wanting in that aesthetic and mate- 
rialistic culture that some account the perfection of civili- 
zation. Who conserved the Latin tongue? Who built 
the cathedrals, illuminated windows and missals, gathered 
great libraries, founded universities, gave to Titian, Giotto, 
Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, the themes 
and motives of their greatest works ? Is it against such a 
Rome as this, such a culture as this, that modern society 
is up in arms ? Nay : but Luther said, " You sha'n't build 
St. Peter's in Rome at the price of souls here in Ger- 
many;" and so he, in his rough way, struck for that cul- 



THE NATION JUDGED BY ITS SELF-DEVELOPMENT. 231 

ture of the spiritual in man which has made Germany 
what she is to-day. The planters of America made that 
spiritual nature their first care. It was because of this, 
that their descendants, in the huge struggle with nature 
that was laid upon them, did not sink toward barbarism. 
It was because this heavenward side of their nature was 
kept always open, and full of light, that, when the pressure 
of their material work was over, they had an aptitude for 
the intellectual and the aesthetic, and began to create a 
literature, and are now giving themselves to art, with the 
intensity of a nature that has mastered the material and 
the political, and now goes on to crave and claim all that 
is noble, good, beautiful, in earth or man, as the heritage, 
the appanage, of a cultivated soul. 

This accounts for the rapid growth of American litera- 
ture. Many of us can remember the sneer of " The Edin- 
burgh Review," "Who reads an American book?" The 
laugh is turned, now that everywhere in England one sees 
the railway book-stalls, and the shelves of circulating 
libraries, crowded with American books in ready demand ; 
that one can count up scores of American authors reprinted 
in England (in the catalogue of a single London publisher 
I lately saw twelve American names) ; that in " The Inter- 
national Scientific Series," published at London and Leip- 
zig, the names of Cooke, Dana, Draper, Flint, Whitney, 
appear side by side with Bain, Carpenter, Huxley, Lubbock, 
Spencer, Tyndall, Bernstein, Liebreich, Leuckart, Stein- 
thal, Virchow ; that every leading English review now has 
its department of American literature. " The Athenaeum " 
finds much to praise, and even the hypercritical " Saturday 
Review " now and then throws us such tid-bits as these : 
" Hawthorne is one of the most fascinating of novelists. 
Whittier's 4 Mabel Martin ' is enough to make the reputa- 
tion of any poet." True, we have given birth to no Shak- 
speare nor Byron ; but with the list of contemporary Eng- 
lish poets, from Tennyson down to Swinburne, we need 
not hesitate to compare our list from Bryant down to 
Whitman, each after his kind. 

Of humorists America has spawned more than enough, 
and cannot but marvel that her English cousins are so 
taken with the " Artemus Ward " and " Mark Twain " style, 



232 CENTEXNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

in which the higher culture of America finds so little trace 
of genius. As yet, we have produced no Beethoven, Mo- 
zart, nor even a Wagner ; but what may not be possible 
in this direction, when all the sound of which America is 
capable shall be wrought into " the music of the future " 
by some new master of the sensations of tone? Lowell 
has wittily said, " The German who plays the bass-viol has 
a well-founded contempt, which he is not always nice in 
concealing, for a country so few of whose children ever 
take that noble instrument between their knees." l Yet 
nowhere do the best musicians now find more appreciative 
and critical audiences than in the United States ; and the 
Avide sale of classical music and of the best pianos argues 
a musical taste among the people at large, which, even in 
the absence of great native composers, may be taken as 
evidence of culture. 2 Must one be a poet to appreciate 
poetry, or a musician to appreciate music ? The man to 
whom I owe more than to any other, if not all others, is 
Beethoven. He it was who first opened to my inner con- 
sciousness the majesty of the soul, the height, depth, length, 
breadth, of the Unutterable. Plato had foreshadowed this 
dreamily; Paul had asserted it dogmatically: Beethoven 
seized upon its inner source, and made it felt and realized 
as consciousness itself. When I approach the master with 
such homage, will he demand that 1 shall conduct a sym- 
phoiyy, play a sonata, or even take the bass-viol between 
my knees? There is a Free-Masonry in music, and even 
the republican can give the secret sign. 

No one would suspect De Tocqueville of wit ; and there- 
fore the caption of one of his chapters is the more exqui- 
sitely droll, — " Why the Americans raise some insignifi- 
cant monuments, and others that are very grand." This 
came to me as a conundrum ; and, having pored over it 
in my study, I walked over to the Thier-garten, and took 
a look at Victory flying her brazen skirts on top of the 
" asparagus " pillar ; walked through the Brandenburg 
Thor, which might be " grand," if stucco were not always 
" insignificant ; " went up the Linden ; paused before the 

i My Study Windows, p. 70. 

2 A college of music has been founded in New York, which will furnish 
an incentive to composition as well as to execution . 



THE NATION JUDGED BY ITS SELF-DEVELOPMENT. 233 

really grand monument of Frederic the Great; admired 
the statues on the bridge, and that marvellous juxtaposi- 
tion of palace, cathedral, museum, arsenal, opera-house, 
university, library, academy, — that groups all the sym- 
bols of civilization as nowhere else in the world, — when 
I found myself staring at that prodigy of ecclesiastical 
architecture, the Dom; and I asked myself again, " Why 
do the Americans raise some insignificant monuments, and 
others that are very grand?" Thus musing, I bethought 
myself of London as I saw it on a bright October day, 
— the majestic dome of St. Paul's, the stately Victoria 
Tower, the Abbey, the embankment and bridges, and 
then Nelson's monument with the four lions, the eques- 
trian statues, and especially the " Iron Duke " astride his 
iron horse, — and again I asked myself, " Why do the 
Americans raise some insignificant monuments, and others 
that are very grand? " And I gave it up, seeing only it 
could not be because they are Americans or republicans, 
and having a vague notion, that, of all humbugs in this 
much humbugged age, on nothing has so much humbug 
been spoken and written as upon art as the measure of 
the culture of a people. 

That museums, galleries, buildings, monuments, statues, 
are no sure criterion of the present stage of national cul- 
ture, — no, not in art itself, — Greece, Spain, and even 
Italy, are melancholy witnesses. When I first saw Paris, 
many years ago, I fancied that the omnipresence of art in 
that brilliant and tasteful capital must have a refining 
influence upon even the meanest of its inhabitants, and 
that one could trace this influence in the very air of busi- 
ness and the manners of the common people. The Com- 
mune dispelled that illusion. The prostrate Vendome 
column, the blackened ruins of the Tuileries and the 
Hotel de Ville, the Louvre scarce saved from the torch 
and petroleum, are a warning to the panegyrists of aesthet- 
ics, that, through all forms of culture and of society, 
human nature remains the one unchanged factor of evil. 
Plato had already admonished us of " the lovers of sounds 
and sights, fond of fine tones and colors and forms, and 
all the artificial products that are made out of them, hav- 
ing a sense of beautiful things, but whose mind is incapa- 



234 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

ble of seeing or loving absolute beauty." 1 Augustine, too, 
had said of his own devotion to the liberal arts, " I had 
my back to the light, and my face to the things enlight- 
ened ; whence my face, with which I discerned the things 
enlightened, itself was not enlightened." Art-culture is 
not always the key to soul-culture, nor are art collections 
always a true index of the culture of the beautiful. The 
Germany of to-day may be in advance of the Italy of 
to-day in the aesthetic spirit, though the chief treasures 
of her museums are of Italian origin, and her best models, 
casts, or copies, of Italian masters, and though Italy is 
tenfold richer in the great originals. Again : the posses- 
sion of a museum or a gallery of exceptional richness in 
this or that locality may be due to the taste and liberality 
of an individual prince, or line of princes, rather than to 
an elevated taste in the people or the race ; just as the 
possession of a grand cathedral may be owing to the acci- 
dent of an architect being born in the place, or to the 
wealth or vanity of the cathedral chapter. Would Dres- 
den acknowledge itself inferior in culture to Cologne or 
Strasburg because it can boast no cathedral like theirs? 
Would Berlin confess itself behind Dresden in art-culture 
because the gallery at Dresden is incomparably richer in 
the best works of the best masters? Or would either 
capital rate itself below Florence or Madrid, though the 
galleries of these are still richer? Taste and wealth, 
judiciously applied, have enabled St. Petersburg to profit 
by the impoverishment of Italy, and to enrich her impe- 
rial gallery with the spoils of Southern art. But does 
this indicate that the Russians, as a people, are surpassing 
the Italians in art-culture ? When, however, the simple 
American citizen buys the gallery of some bankrupt Euro- 
pean noble, either for his private enjoyment, or to found 
by his munificence a museum for the public, this is a true 
indication of the growth of art in America, and points to 
a surer test of culture than the size and value of collec- 
tions, — the diffusion of taste among the people. 2 It is the 

1 Republic, book v. 

2 In the private galleries of New York, in addition to the best produc- 
tions of American artists, — Bierstadt, Boughton, Church, Cole, Cropsey, 
Gifford, Gray, Hicks, Huntington, Ingham, Eastman Johnson, Leutze, 
Page, and others, — may be found many choice specimens of famous 



THE NATION JUDGED BY ITS SELF-DEVELOPMENT. 235 

glory of Italy, as it was once the glory of Greece, that 
she has achieved great things in art; and this attests 
a special art-capacity in the race. We must honestly 
confess that our national taste in art has not much to 
boast of, either in originals or in selections ; though we 
are beginning to have a school in landscape-painting. 
The proverb, " A fool and his money are soon parted," has 
been often illustrated in the art-purchasers of our par- 
venus abroad. But, though the taste needs to be edu- 
cated, the capacity is there. We are learning to laugh 
at our follies and our fools. Looking beyond the facti- 
tious culture of modern Europe to the glory of Praxiteles 
and Phidias, of Zeuxis and Apelles, we are beginning to 
ask ourselves, Why should not democracy, as the nursery 
of man, be again true to its mission as the nursery of 
art? Why should the American people erect "insig- 
nificant monuments," though European powers have done 
the same ? The growth among us of a guild of the culti- 
vated, men of wealth and their sons, who use wealth for 
the adornment of life; the growth of art-criticism; the 
founding of schools and museums of art in New York, 
Philadelphia, Boston, and other cities, and at Yale and 
other colleges; the improvement in church architecture, 
and in the taste of public buildings and of suburban villas ; 
the increase of art-students, and of journals devoted to 
art, — these all are healthy signs, that, our rougher work 
and sterner duties being so far accomplished, we shall 
turn the training of the inner nature to the culture of 
the outer. 

The fashion of rich men to found libraries, lyceums, 
colleges ; the wide demand for books of science ; the popu- 
larity of scientific lectures, and of journals that reproduce 
these cheaply for the million ; the effort of indigent stu- 
dents and teachers to see and learn all that the Old World 
has to show or teach ; the creation of an International 
Exposition with appropriate architecture, art, and adorn- 
ment, — are cheering tokens of the diffusion, among the 
masses, of that degree of knowledge which creates the 

European painters, — Achenbaeh, Rosa Bonheur, Camphausen, Cooper, 
Gerome, Girard de Haas, Jordan, Kaulbach, Knaus, Merle, Meissonier, 
Meyer von Bremen, Ary Scheffer, Troyon, Verboeckhoven, Horace Vernet. 



236 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

desire for more, and conducts to the higher culture. The 
intellectual activity of the American people has shown 
itself largely in discoveries and inventions serviceable to 
mankind. Franklin had already a European reputation as 
a philosopher before he appeared on the stage as a states- 
man ; and where he led, in drawing the electricity of the 
clouds harmless to the earth, there Morse followed, in 
appropriating electricity to the transmission of thought, 
and making this intelligible through an alphabet ; and 
Henry, with his application of the helix, and the combina- 
tion of circuits through the receiving-magnet and the 
relay ; and Field, with his personal magnetism organizing 
the company for the Atlantic telegraph, and with his 
indomitable pluck laying the cable when everybody said 
he had failed. And now comes Gray, with his studies upon 
the electric current, and his arrangement of batteries, by 
which the same wire can be made to transmit two, four, 
and even eight messages at the same instant of time. Eli 
Whitney invented the cotton-gin, and the heir of his name 
and genius contrived machinery for making ffuns in con- 
vertible parts. Colt, Remington, Sharps, Maynard, Win- 
chester, and other American names, are known throughout 
the world for inventions in fire-arms. Hare, the earliest 
American chemist, invented the oxyhydrogen blow-pipe ; 
and the laboratories of the United States, though but ineffi- 
cientty equipped, have been tireless in their researches, 
and productive in results for the service of humanity. 
Prominent among these is the twin-discovery of Jackson 
and Wells in anaesthetics, by which the pains of surgery 
are turned to pleasurable dreams. The war of the Rebel- 
lion brought prominently before Europe the skill and tact 
of American surgeons. The American ambulance and the 
American field-hospital are extensively copied by foreign 
armies. The Empress of Germany, who takes a lively 
interest in the medical service of the army, was desirous 
of sending to the Philadelphia Exposition a complete 
assortment of the German field and hospital apparatus. 
" It would hardly be worth while, your Majesty," said a 
high officer, " since so many of the best devices are bor- 
rowed from the United States." The organ of the Thurin- 
gian Medical Society lately published (from the pen of 



THE NATION JUDGED BY ITS SELF-DEVELOPMENT. 237 

Medicinalrath Dr. Meusel of Gotha) a highly favorable 
notice of the Catalogue of the United States Medical 
Museum at Washington. Commending this review and 
the catalogue, a prominent physician of Germany wrote 
as follows to the editor of " The Chronicle of the Conti- 
nent : " — 

" The various reports of celebrated American surgeons which 
appear from time to time concerning important operations sufficiently 
indicate the extent to which surgical science and skill in America 
have been developed, and show also the number of masters in this 
branch of the profession which your country *has produced. The 
recent consultations and operations in Germany of your esteemed 

countryman, Dr. B , have also contributed in no small degree to 

the high value which is placed upon American surgical practice. 
Naturally, a surgeon so celebrated as he is an isolated instance. But 
from this catalogue, which Dr. Meusel has reviewed, we can clearly see 
what a large number of skilful investigating surgeons America pos- 
sesses, and what a splendid example was shown by them in the treat- 
ment and care of the American armies during the late civil war, — 
something which has never been properly acknowledged in Europe." 

The pre-eminence of Americans in dental surgery is 
everywhere recognized. Indeed, it was in the United 
States that this department was first raised to the dignity 
of a science. 

It was an American who discovered the process of 
vulcanizing caoutchouc ; and the pains and privations that 
Goodyear underwent in making a familiar vegetable sub- 
stance so widely serviceable to mankind entitle him to a 
name among the heroic benefactors of the race. 

The invention of the cotton-gin was followed by a num- 
ber of valuable American improvements upon the various 
English inventions for carding and spinning. 

In printing, Adams, Bullock, Hoe, and other American 
inventors, have carried the press and its accessories to a 
degree of perfection widely recognized in Europe, and not 
yet surpassed. American industry and invention have 
been remarkably developed in the manufacture of iron, 
which had long been a monopoly of great Britain. Says 
" The London Times," — 

" The Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia has brought together 
such an assemblage of the products of American industry as to impress 
the visitor with a strong sense of the manufacturing activity of the 



238 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

United States. In every department of manufacture, the United 
States are creditably represented ; and the practical result seems to 
be, that, in the United States, we have now powerful competitors in 
all branches of industry, and especially in that which we considered 
our own, — the iron trade. Such a state of affairs deserves the atten- 
tion of Englishmen. It presents to us important lessons." 

Following the experiments of Fitch on the Delaware, 
Fulton first made the steamboat practicable upon the 
Hudson ; and, since Stephenson invented the locomotive, 
what valuable improvements have been made by Ameri- 
can genius, both in the engine, and in brakes and other 
appliances for the trains ! x The steam fire-engine is an 
American invention ; as is also the extinguisher, by which 
a chemical antagonist to combustion is scientifically com- 
bined with water for the speedy extinction of flames. 
Machinery for heading pins and tacks from the body of 
the wire, for making boots, shoes, and regulation watches, 
for relieving the household of the drudgery of the needle, 
and the husbandman of the hard hand-labor of the plough, 
the spade, the scythe, the sickle, and the rake, machinery 
for every conceivable purpose of domestic utility and man- 
ual dexterity, witnesses for the fruit-fulness and the useful- 
ness of American invention. While millions of homes and 
farms are rejoicing in the sewing-machine, the mowing and 
reaping machines, by which America has lightened their 
labor, now comes the writing-machine to turn the drudg- 
ery of the composer and the copjung-clerk into the pleas- 
ure of playing a well-toned piano without the tediousness 
of that practice. But why need I reproduce the records of 
the patent-office ? 2 America is bristling with inventions ; 
and, though she had much to learn, she had little to fear, 
from competition with other nations in her World Expo- 
sition. Nor is the inventive genius to be disparaged as 
belonging to a lower mechanical grade of culture. It de- 
tracts nothing from the scientific genius of Galileo that 
he invented or copied the telescope, nor from Helmholtz 
that he invented the ophthalmoscope. 3 Not all the valor 
and discipline of European armies could avail, were not 

i In Kussia the American locomotive takes precedence of all others. 
2 From 1800 to 1870, 120.2 ( J8 patents were issued by the United States, of 
which 70,(512 were between 18G0 and 1870. 
s See note at the close of the Lecture. 



THE NATION JUDGED BY ITS SELF-DEVELOPMENT. 239 

inventors continually improving the weapons of war. 
What were Moltke without Krupp ? Germany has not 
hesitated to erect a monument to the genius of Guten- 
berg, and has grouped Theology, Poetry, Science, and In- 
dustry in an attitude of admiration around the inventor 
of movable type. England has reared monuments to 
Stephenson ; and America may well rear statues of 
Franklin, Fulton, Morse, Field, as benefactors of man- 
kind. 

Indeed, it marks the dignity and worth of American 
civilization, that, from first to last, it has sought the good 
of diversified and collective humanity, — for mankind in 
its aims, to mankind in its results. I marvel, that, in his 
ode to Boston, Emerson should have opened on so low a 
key: — 

" The merchant was a man. 

The world was made for honest trade : 

To plant and eat be none afraid." 

True, as he advances, he rises to a nobler key, and 
sings, — 

" Each honest man shall have his vote, 

Each child shall have his school; 

For what avail the plough or sail, 

Or land or life, if freedom fail ? " 

Yes, the merchants of Boston were men; and noble, 
princely men have they been. But, from the first, the 
glory of Boston was to provide for knowledge and religion, 
and open to men, of whatever grade, avenues to that self- 
culture that marks the man. And as of Boston, so of the 
proper American type of civilization, it is cosmopolitan in 
the spirit of elevating humanity. I know a civilization 
where the plough-boy and the smith's apprentice were 
taught to put all knowledge in their heads, and all virtue 
in their hearts ; and from the plough came the statesman- 
ship of Daniel Webster, and from the anvil came the 
philology and philanthropy of Elihu Burrit. I know a 
civilization that taught the factory-girls of Lowell, in the 
good old times when farmers' daughters went there to 
spin, to diversify their labor with editing a literary maga- 
zine, and learning accomplishments in music and the arts. 



240 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

I know a civilization where the farmer sweats over his 
hard-hancled toil, that his son may go to college, and his 
daughter may have her library and piano ; feels that an 
education is the true patent of nobility, and the best estate 
for his children ; and then is grateful to God, if his chil- 
dren, educated by his toil and theirs, shall go forth as 
missionaries of Christian civilization. It is because of 
this view of the worth of the individual and the brother- 
hood of humanity, that the United States, having set the 
example of coclifj-ing her own laws, has taken the initia- 
tive in schemes of arbitration and for the reform of inter- 
national law in the interest of peace and unity, which 
shall one day bring in an era of culture such as Europe 
has not yet seen. 



NOTE ON AMERICAN PROGRESS. 

In a spoken lecture it was impossible to give more than an outline 
of the progress of the United States in the century ; and no audience 
would have been patient of an array of statistics which the reader 
can study at leisure on the printed page. Even the most moderate 
statement of what has been done in America for learning, science, 
art, and general culture, is apt to be received in Europe with incredu- 
lity or disparagement. But the cultivated American cannot be sur- 
prised or annoyed at this, lie will remember, that, down to a very 
recent period, he has had ten reasons for studying the civilization of 
the Old World where the European had one for studying the civiliza- 
tion of the New. As to England, even if he has had no personal ex- 
perience of the fact, his Emerson, Lowell, and Hawthorne will have 
taught him how completely insular is her national spirit and ideal, 
even to a degree that " makes existence incompatible with all that is 
not English ; " but, as he listens to the tone of English criticism 
upon his country, the honest American will remember how ,l faithful 
are the wounds of a friend," and, pardoning much to a chronic and 
grotesque dogmatism, will consider, also, that family criticism more 
often springs from a secret pride than from real bitterness or dislike. 
Still less can any well-balanced American be affected by the new 
style of French criticism, represented by Claudio Jannet and Talley- 
rand-Perigord. He understands perfectly that it is the cue of cleri- 
calism in France, as of conservatism in Germany, to disparage the 
United States as a check to liberal aspirations at home ; and he 
reflects, that, in France, liberty is an imperishable aspiration, and 
Lafayette, De Tocqueville, and Laboulaye are imperishable names. 

But the cultivated American will be especially considerate of the 



NOTE ON AMEKICAN PKOGRESS. 241 

insouciance of German society touching the condition and culture of 
the United States. He will consider how slowly new ideas penetrate 
the learned mind of Germany from outside the prescribed routine of 
its own investigations. He will consider how indifferently the Ger- 
man press is, for the most part, appointed and conducted. Above all, 
he will consider how short an interval has elapsed since Germany 
began to create a truly national literature, and how recent is her 
emancipation from the humiliating superiority of France in arts and 
arms, and hence will make allowance for an air of youthful assump- 
tion, which will be toned down by a broader experience of the respon- 
sibilities of national independence. Just now, the intoxication of a 
military success, which the sober reports of the staff-office show was 
more than once due to some lucky accident, leads the untravelled 
German to prate over-much of " Bildung," "Kunst," " Kultur," 
" Wissenschaft," and to assume that every American who visits Ger- 
many must look with wonder and envy upon its higher civilization. 
But the American, who knows too well this infirmity in his own 
countrymen, can afford to be indulgent toward the Teutonic braggart, 
who really has so much to boast of. I have had much innocent 
amusement, as well as some patient discipline, in the supercilious 
comments of this new-fledged Germany upon the United States. In 
Germany, breadth and solidity of information are by no means commen- 
surate with depth of learning. A person of the highest social position, 
and who has always moved within the sphere of university-life, 
asked me, " Who is this Mr. Morse ? and what has he done, that 
your countrymen propose to erect a monument to him ? " Suppose I 
should ask who was Gutenberg ? who was Stephenson ? — what shrug- 
ging of shoulders there would be in " cultivated " circles in Germany 
and England ! 

One of the foremost monthlies, which well represents the literature 
and learning of Germany, in an article on railways, written by a 
university professor, attributed to " a speech of Pres. Lincoln in the 
Senate of the United States " the astounding statement, that, " in 
building a railway, it was better to finish the road rapidly, because, 
though such immature work would cost more lives, it would hasten the 
development of the country." I wrote to the editor, that Mr. Lincoln 
never was in the Senate ; that, excepting in the case of the Pacific 
roads, the Senate had had nothing to do with railways ; and though 
Mr. Lincoln had once urged the rapid and vigorous prosecution of the 
war, on the ground that the salvation of the Union would infinitely 
overbalance all present cost and loss, he was utterly incapable of thus 
staking human life against the gains of a railroad. The editor prom- 
ised to make the correction; but just then an American newspaper at 
Berlin made a squib upon his article, to the effect, that, on the occa- 
sion referred to, "Alexander Hamilton, senator from Toronto, had 
replied to Mr. Lincoln with great eloquence and power." The be- 
wildered German Gelelirte hereupon sent me this paragraph, which 
he took to be serious, and said, " Though I have much confidence in 
your knowledge, I suspect that my allusion to Mr. Lincoln was cor- 
rect, since the accompanying paragraph, which gives evidence of mi- 
nute accuracy, confirms my statement." I was obliged to answer, 



242 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

" My dear sir, don't you see that this paragraph is making a fool of 
you? Don't you know that Toronto is in Canada? that Hamilton 
was never in the Senate ? and that he was killed five years before 
Lincoln was born ? " But the learned editor never made the correc- 
tion. 

Another journal that aspires to lead opinion in the capital, and 
whose editor is certified by a doctorate of the university, some time 
ago enlightened its readers with an account of the American Thanks- 
giving. After describing the sour New-England Puritan, who would 
allow no holiday nor festivity, but enforced the Jewish sabbath by 
stringent penalties, this journal discovered a hopeful triumph of 
human nature in the fact that the great national festival of Thanks- 
giving had won its way even into New England, and, bj captivating 
the hearts of the rising generation there, had somewhat relaxed the 
Pharisaism of the elders. I dropped a respectful line to the editor, 
assuming that he would be interested to give the true history of the 
Pilgrim festival that flourished in New England a century and a half 
before there were any United States, and more than two centuries 
before it was adopted as a national institution; but an educated 
German, whose journal has ridiculed an English author for making 
an error of one year in the date of an incident of German literature, 
confessed that his readers did not care enough about American affairs 
to make it worth while to correct such an egregious blunder. 

One evening, at a salon where were assembled only the most learned 

and cultivated society, I was presented first to Prof. . who said 

at once, " Prom America? I believe you have as yet no universities : 
you are too young to have any science." — " On that point," I replied, 
" I prefer to accept the verdict of the Berlin Academy, which crowned 
with its prize, a work of our Sanscrit scholar, Prof. Whitney; the 
verdict of the various European academies that have elected Prof. 
Dana an associate ; the verdict of " — " Ah, so I " And this interlocutor 
gave place to a second, who said, " I suppose you have no museums 
yet in America: you are too young for these." — "If you intend 
museums of science, I might remind you of the Smithsonian at Wash- 
ington, the Peabody at New Haven, the Agassiz at Cambridge. In 
museums of art and antiquity, of course w r e cannot compete with na- 
tions which were in the market before we were born. Still we have 
some treasures from Egypt and Assyria that European museums 
would like to possess ; and Berlin or London would be glad to get hold 
of the Cesnola Cyprus Collection, now at New York. This you 
know is genuine. But how about those Moabite antiquities in your 
Berlin Museum, and that other lot from Italy bought by your first 
Roman archaeologist as a precious find ? How, too, about the indorse- 
ment of the Cardiff giant by German savans after American scholars 
had promptly exposed the fraud ? You see we take an interest in 
these matters to the extent of our opportunity." — " Ah, so ! " 

I was next honored with a presentation to an eminent musician. 
" In America," said he, " you are not at all musical." — " If you mean 
that we have not produced great composers, nor many eminent artists, 
you are quite correct : nevertheless, your artists seek fame and fortune 
in America, and wince, too, under our criticisms. As to the love of 



NOTE OX AMERICAN PROGRESS. 243 

music, I may mention that two piano-manufactories in New York 
alone turn out each at the rate of ten pianos a day for every day of 
the year ; and these are sold at prices from five hundred dollars up 
to three thousand dollars." — " So ! " and " So I " and " So ! " 

" Russia has been called a despotism tempered by assassination," 
said my host one evening at a supper-table, " and your government is 
democracy tempered by the revolver. In your Senate, every man has 
a revolver on his table." This was said in sober earnest by a uni- 
versity professor ; and the company, composed entirely of official and 
educated persons, laughed heartily at what they fancied was a fair hit 
at a foreign guest. In a few patient words, I pointed out that the 
violence of slaveholders in former times, and the roughness of frontier- 
life, did not represent the character and habits of the Senate of the 
United States. But it was of little use to talk with men who had 
never heard the names of Calhoun, Webster, Everett, Seward ; who 
knew nothing at all of the Constitution of the American Government, 
and met every fact with that annihilating threat (in which the 
tax-ridden, army-burdened German finds a momentary consolation), 
" You'll have to come to a monarchy at last." These are not selected 
instances, but could be multiplied by the score. I do not adduce 
them either to caricature or to characterize the German people. I 
think it indecent in a foreigner to caricature the people among whom 
he lives, by exaggerating their faults, and ignoring their virtues ; and 
a people so kindly and sincere as the Germans, a people of so many 
fine and noble qualities, could never form a subject for caricature. 
Neither would I intimate that such examples fairly characterize the 
higher classes of German society ; for though too often the German 
savant is ignorant of general subjects in the degree that he is learned 
in his specialty, and vain of his opinion where he is least informed, 
yet there are many notable exceptions, — men of breadth as well as 
of accuracy, men of information as well as of learning, men of the 
cosmopolitan spirit of true science. The many modest, manly Ger- 
mans whom it is a pleasure to know, the quiet, learned Germans, of 
broad and liberal training, whom it is an honor as well as a pleasure 
to know, are a truer type of the national culture. These have travelled 
far enough to learn that the world is not bounded by the Rhine, the 
Vistula, and the Danube ; and that other countries have a civilization 
older, or, if newer, yet in some respects better, than their own. Never- 
theless, such crude questions and comments upon the United States 
as one hears in the best circles of Germany do illustrate a prevailing 
tone, and must conduct to two inferences, — that the reputation of Ger- 
mans for general knowledge has been strangely overrated ;. and that 
American culture should not seek to measure itself by any foreign 
standard, but should build itself up quietly upon its natural and endur- 
ing basis, assimilating from other civilizations what it may find use- 
ful for ornament or expansion, but only in subordination to its own 
broad plan and lofty aims. 

The superiority of the United States in many inventions and manu- 
factures, which was so apparent at the Philadelphia Exposition, was 
gracefully conceded by the correspondents and commissioners of 
several foreign countries. Most conspicuous among these was Prof. 



244 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

F. Reuleaux, director of the Royal Gewerbe-Akademie at Berlin, a 
member of the German Commission and Jury at the Exposition; a 
gentleman eminently qualified by scientific and practical knowledge, 
by sobriety of j udgment and candor of spirit, for the delicate task of 
comparing the products of other countries with his own. With marked 
emphasis Prof. Reuleaux admonishes his countrymen that they have 
been too much in the habit of undervaluing American industry, which 
they now find has outstripped that of Germany. He points out that 
American machinists have brought the steam-engine to its highest 
perfection, through the combination of beauty of form, and nicety 
of adaptation, with smoothness of working, and strength and endur- 
ance of materials ; and that, in tool-serving machines, American 
ingenuity and skill have outstripped all competition, in new practical 
ideas, apt adjustment to special ends, precision and harmony of move- 
ment, elegance of appearance, and perfection of results. In American 
steel-ware, surgical instruments, glass manufacture, gas-fixtures, chan- 
deliers, &c, and in gold and silver workmanship and ornamentation, 
Prof. Reuleaux finds indications of a native skill that may well incite 
the rivalry of European nations, it is beginning to be understood 
that Americans can make a- watch as well as a sew ing-machine, a tele- 
scope as well as a revolver. Now. the lesson from all this is. that- 
skilful and tasteful improvements in the industries and comforts of 
life mark an advancement in the average culture of the people, and 
may even indicate a higher general culture than is marked by the. 
existence of royal galleries and museums or the art-treasures of the 
privileged few. The farmer or mechanic who buys some nicer or 
more convenient article of household furniture, some tasteful knick- 
knack to adorn his home, shows the spirit of culture, the preference 
of the aesthetic and the enjoyable to the purely useful ; ami when the 
inventive genius of a nation is turned to the improvement of all manu- 
factures in quality, appearance, taste, this is an evidence that the mar- 
ket calls for such elements, because the average culture of the people 
appreciates them. Germany, which has but little debt, received from 
France as an indemnity for the war of 1S70-71 a thousand million 
dollars. Since then her taxes have increased, and her industry and 
manufactures have notoriously deteriorated; yet the conquest of 
France is constantly adduced as an evidence of the higher culture of 
the German nation. The United States has a public debt of two 
thousand million dollars ; yet in the past six years that debt has 
been reduced by more than four hundred millions of dollars, the 
annual interest by nearly thirty millions, and the taxes by nearly 
three hundred millions; while, at the same time, American industry 
and invention have advanced to a position of recognized equality, if 
not of superiority, in competition with Europe. Is there no token of 
culture and civilization in these conquests of peace ? Prof. Reuleaux 
discerned the connection of which I have spoken between the general 
improvement in technic and the spirit of culture in the people. He 
testifies that the aesthetic consciousness is thoroughly awake in the 
United States ; that cottage life in America has a charm, in the com- 
bination of domesticity, comfort, taste, and refinement, which Ger- 
many might profitably take as an example. As further evidence of 



NOTE ON AMERICAN PROGRESS. 245 

this, he adduces the eagerness with which the best foreign wares were 
bought up for the industrial museums of Philadelphia, Boston, New 
York, and other places. In short, the aesthetic consciousness showed 
itself everywhere, in life, in incitement, and in the zeal to appropriate 
spiritually all that is already possessed materially. 1 

But, though this inventive type of American progress is getting 
to be conceded, there are still those who fancy that America has con- 
tributed nothing to the scientific progress of the century. On this 
point, Prof. J. W. Draper, who, so. long as he keeps within the domain 
of the physical sciences, is an unquestioned authority, gives testi- 
mony as follows : — 

"We may without vanity recall some facts that may relieve us, in a 
measure, from the weight of this heavy accusation. We have sent out ex- 
peditious of exploration both to the Arctic and Antarctic Seas. We have 
submitted our own coast to a hydrographic and geodesic survey not ex- 
celled in exactness and extent by any similar works elsewhere. In the 
accomplishment of this we have been'compelled to solve many physical 
problems of the greatest delicacy and highest importance, and we have 
done it successfully. The measuring-rods with which the three great base- 
lines of Maine, Loug Island, Georgia, were determined, and their beautiful 
mechanical appliances, have exacted the xmblicly expressed admiration of 
some of the greatest European philosophers; and the conduct of that sur- 
vey, their unstiuted applause. We have instituted geological surveys of 
many of our States and much of our Territories, and have been rewarded 
not merely by manifold local benrits, but also by the higher honor of ex- 
tending very greatly the boundaries of that noble science. At an enor- 
mous annual cost, we have maintained a meteorological signal system, 
which, I think, is not equalled, and certainly is not surpassed, in the 
world. Should it be said that selfish interests have been mixed up with 
some of these undertakings, we may demand whether there was any self- 
ishness in the survey of the Dead Sea. Was there any selfishness in that 
mission that a citizen of New York sent to equatorial Africa for the find- 
ing and relief of Livingstone? any in the astronomical expedition to South 
America V any in that to the valley of the Amazon? Was there any in the 
sending out of parties for the observation of the total eclipses of the sun ? 
It was by American astronomers that the true character of his corona was 
first determined. Was there any in the seven expeditions that were de- 
spatched for observing the transit of Venus ? Was it not here that the 
bi-partition of Biela's comet was first detected? here that the eighth satel- 
lite of Saturn was discovered? here that the dusky ring of that planet, 
which had escaped the penetrating eye of Herschel and all the great Euro- 
pean astronomers, was first seen? Was it not by an American telescope 
that the companion of Sirius, the brightest star in the heavens, was re- 
vealed, and the mathematical prediction of the cause of his perturbations 
verified ? Was it not by a Yale-college professor that the showers of shoot- 
ing-stars were first scientifically discussed, on the occasion of the grand 
American display of that meteoric phenomenon in 1833 ? Did we not join 
in the investigations respecting terrestrial magnetism instituted by Euro- 
pean governments at the suggestion of Humboldt, and contribute our 
quota to the results obtained ? Did not the Congress of the United 
States vote a money-grant to carry into effect the invention of the elec- 
tric telegraph? Does not the published flora of the United States show 
that something has been done in botany? Have not very important inves- 
tigations been made here on the induction of magnetism in iron, the effect 
of magnetic currents on one another, the translation of quality into inten- 
sity, and the converse ? Was it not here that the radiations of incan- 
descence were first investigated; the connection of increasing temperature 

1 Briefe aus Philadelphia, von I. Reuleaux, Prof. Braunschweig, 1877. 



246 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

•with increasing refrangibility shown; the distribution of light, heat, and 
chemical activity in the solar spectrum ascertained, and some of the fun- 
damental facts in spectrum analysis developed, long before general atten- 
tion was given to that siibject in Europe ? Here the first photograph of 
the moon was taken; here the first of the diffraction spectrums was pro- 
duced; here the first portraits of the human face were made, — an exiDeri- 
nient that has given rise to an important industrial art. 

"Of our own special science, — chemistry, — it may truly be affirmed, 
that nowhere are its most advanced ideas," its new conceptions, better 
understood, or more eagerly received. But how useless would it be for me 
to attempt a description in these few moments of what Prof. Silliman, in 
the work to which I have already referred, found that he could not include 
on more than a hundred closely-printed pages, though he proposed merely 
to give the names of American chemists and the titles of their works! 
It would be equally useless, and, indeed, an invidious task, to offer a selec- 
tion; but this may be said, that, among the more prominent memoirs, there 
are many not inferior to the foremost that the chemical literature of Eu- 
rope can present. How unsatisfactory, then, is this brief statement I 
have made of what might be justly claimed for American science! Had it 
been ten times as long, and far more forcibly offered, it would still have 
fallen short of completeness. I still should have been open to the accusa- 
tion of not having done justice to the subject." 

To this enumeration must be added the repeated efforts of the 
United-States Government to open a ship-canal between the Atlan- 
tic and Pacific Oceans, the explorations and surveys crowned at last 
by the treaty with Nicaragua, securing a feasible route, and pledg- 
ing this impartially to the commerce of the world. A new Arctic 
expedition is also in contemplation, notwithstanding the declaration 
of the latest English explorers that "the north pole'is impractica- 
ble." 

In the department of physics alone the United States has con- 
tributed no mean share to the science of the century. It is enough to 
mention in acoustics Henry, Leconte, Mayer, Rogers ; in heat, Draper, 
Hare, Rumford, Wells ; in optics, Draper, Gibbs, Gould, Rood, Ruther- 
ford ; in electricity and magnetism, Bache, Gray, Henry, Morse, Page, 
Rowland. 

The widespread zeal for science in America was gracefully recog- 
nized by Agassiz in the preface to his great work, " The Natural 
History of the United States : " "So general is the desire for knowl- 
edge, that I expect to see my book read by operatives, by fishermen, 
by farmers, quite as extensively as by the students in our colleges, 
or by the learned professions." A fine comment upon this tribute 
was given in the subscriptions to the Agassiz Memorial Fund, which 
embraced several hundred names of men, women, and youths, from ail 
classes and occupations of life, and ranged from twenty-five thousand 
dollars down to fifty cents. The total sum thus given to complete 
the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Cambridge was $260,674, to 
which the State added a grant of $50,000. Here, too, is an illustration 
of the American method of endowing science, which Prof. Huxley, 
in his speech at the meeting of the American Association of Science 
at Buffalo, complimented in these words : — 

" The English universities are the product of the government; yours, of 
private munificence. That among us is almost unknown. The general 
notion of an Englishman, when he gets rich, is to found an estate, and 



NOTE ON AMERICAN PROGRESS. 247 

benefit his family: the general notion of an American, when fortunate, 
is to do something for the good of the people, and from which benefits 
shall continue to flow. The latter is the nobler ambition. 

" It is popularly said abroad that you have no antiquities in America. 
If you talk about the trumpery of three or four thousand years of history, 
it is true. But in the large sense, as referring to times before man made 
his momentary appearance, America is the place to study the antiquities 
of the globe. The reality of the enormous amount of material here has far 
surpassed my anticipation. I have studied tbe collection gathered by Prof. 
Marsh at New Haven. There is none like it in Europe, not only in extent 
of time covered, but by reason of its bearing on the problem of evolution." 

What we need in America to continue to deserve such praise is, 
first of all, concentration, the building-up of a few great universities 
(half a dozen would be enough for the whole country) as centres of 
learning ; and, next, the endowment of research, as is contemplated, for 
instance, in the fellowships of the Johns Hopkins University at Balti- 
more. 

One branch of American culture too often overlooked is that lin- 
guistic training by virtue of which American missionaries have won 
such renown as translators of the Bible into loreign tongues, and, in 
repeated instances, as the creators of a written language and litera- 
ture for barbarous tribes. Not even the famous Indian service of the 
British Government can compare with the mission service of the lead- 
ing American societies in linguistic and scientific attainments. 

A striking indication of the place of the fine arts in American 
culture was lately given in the sale of a private picture-gallery in 
New York. This gallery contained works of the most famous artists 
of England, France, and Germany ; and, in " hard times," there were 
buyers enough to pay over three hundred thousand dollars for its 
treasures. In the chief cities of the United States such galleries may 
now be counted by the score. 

But enough. I should be sorry if this note should be perverted by 
any of my countrymen to a boastful use. In all reason, in the matter 
of culture, we have yet enough to learn and acquire. But neither 
self-depreciation nor foreign imitation is the lesson that we need. 
Our calling is to perfect that culture which is distinctively American, 
— the culture which springs from and tends to that which is spiritual 
in man, and which diffuses its refining influence over the whole body 
of the people. 



LECTURE VI. 

THE PEEILS, DUTIES, AND HOPES OF THE OPENING 
CENTTJBY. 

IN what I said of culture as the perfecting of society in 
the noble, the beautiful, the true, the good, through the 
training of each citizen to the highest exercise of knowl- 
edge and virtue, I was placing before you the ideal of a 
perfect State. If, now, from this platform you challenge 
me to forecast the actual of American society in the open- 
ing century, I can but repeat the answer of Socrates to 
Glaucon : " You must not insist on my proving that the 
actual State will in every respect agree with the descrip- 
tion of the ideal. ... 13 ut is our theory a worse theory 
because we are unable to prove the possibility of a city being 
ordered in the manner described ? . . . Until philosophers 
are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the 
spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and 
wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who 
follow either to the exclusion of the other are compelled 
to stand aside, cities will never cease from ill; no, nor 
the human race, as I believe; and then only will this 
our State have a possibility of life, and behold the light of 
day. This was what I wanted but was afraid to say, my 
dear Glaucon ; for to see that there is no other way either 
of private or public happiness is indeed a hard thing." 1 

Could any thing be more sad than this lament of a great 
soul over the impracticability of its own ideal of private 
and public happiness ? It is like the mysterious warning 
that haunted Mozart, — that the noblest, sweetest harmo- 
nies that ever issued from his soul were for the requiem of 

1 Plato, Bepublic, B. v., Jowett's translation. 
248 



PERILS, DUTIES, ETC., OF THE OPENING CENTURY. 249 

his own genius and art. Yet as, in the requiem, there are 
strains of hope rising out of the very wail of sadness, so 
may we gather courage and patience from the wisdom of 
Socrates, when he further says, that having discovered the 
absolute justice, and set this up as the standard, — as the 
artist minutely paints an ideal of a perfectly beautiful man, 
though unable to show that any such man could ever have 
existed, — so in the State " we may be satisfied with an 
approximation to the absolute,- and the attainment of a 
higher degree of justice than is to be found in other men." 

It is worth remembering that this ideal of a State ordered 
by intelligence and virtue, ruled by greatness and wisdom 
joined in one, which Plato put into the mouth of Socrates, 
is essentially a republic in its constitution, — " a voluntary 
rule over voluntary subjects," l though vested in the aris- 
tocracy of intellect, — a community of equals ruled willing- 
ly by the wisest and the best. But the resurrection of 
democracy in modern times has called out a class of critics 
who argue that the sovereignty of the people, in its very 
nature, makes impossible a just, wise, and virtuous State. 
The latest of this school, Mons. Clauclio Jannet, in con- 
trasting the United States of to-day with the United States 
of Washington's time, ascribes the corruption and decay of 
the republic to " the false principle of the sovereignty of 
the people." 2 But his criticism both of the corruption 
and its cause should be viewed in the light of the remedy 
that he proposes, — the supremacy of the Roman-Catholic 
Church, which should repress the quarrelsome sects, do 
away with the fatal (funeste) system of public schools, 
and put down the impious and revolutionary notions of 
recent times, — such as the original perfection of humanity, 
the sovereignty of the people, the native equality of men, 
and progress indefinite and necessary. 3 

A more friendly and philosophical critic, De Tocqueville, 
says, " Corruption is the special vice of democracies." But 
has the Swiss Republic been marked by corruption? Or 
is Turkey a democracy, the stench of whose corruption 
now fills all Europe with disgust ? Is Austria a democracy, 

1 Jowett, Introduction to the Republic. 

2 Les Etats Unis Contemporains, par Claudio Jannet, chap. ii. 

3 Ibid., chap. xxv. 



250 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

whose tribunals have unveiled some of the grossest frauds 
of modern times ? Are Italy and Spain democracies ? l Or 
was France a democracy under Napoleon III. ? Is Russia 
a democracy? But, if Mr. Schuyler's revelations were 
undiplomatic or indiscreet, have they ever been disproved ? 
And who will question the testimony of Koscheleff, late 
Russian minister of finance? — " Employees formerly pur- 
loined and perhaps robbed by the copeck : now-a-days they 
are too highly civilized to confine themselves to such baga- 
telles, but feast upon thousands and tens of thousands of 
roubles, joint-stock company shares, regular salaries from 
banking-offices, railway companies, &c." Even in Ger- 
many, once proverbially honest, has not G-rilnder become 
a by-word for swindler ? 2 And do not Germans contribute 

1 In this very year (1876) an Austrian lieutenant of noble birth has been 
stripped of bis title, and condemned to ten years' penal servitude, for hav- 
ing sold military papers of the Vienna war-oliice to Col. Molostroff, mili- 
tary attach^ of the Russian embassy at Vienna. 

In Italy, a nobleman who pretended to the eontidence of the king has 
been convicted of forging his Majesty's name to the amount of several 
hundred thousand francs. 

There have been no worse scandals than these in the United States. 
The London Spectator of Oct. 28, 1876, in. vindicating Disraeli from the 
charge of venality in his Eastern policy, said, — 

"The Emperor Napoleon no more regulated his policy with a view to his profits than 
Lord Beaconsfield does: but very great men who knew what his policy would bo made 
very great prolits out oi their early knowledge. Great officials in Austria did not sell 
contracts; bul greal officials in Austria were, not ashamed to make money cut of their 
early knowledge of the way in which profitable contracts would be distributed. Great 
Russians are not paid for their political influence: but great Russians' dependants 
make, or have made, fortunes out of their knowledge of the way in which inlluence, 
often secret and personal, would ultimately be exerted. The public, always shrewd, 
more especially under a despotism, when 'society ' acquires much of the power of 
observation as'well as of the supplenessof a slave, perceives these facts, and, after 
the manner of gossips, makes every story a little worse, and therefore a little more 
piquant, than the reality. Because contracts for regimentals are sold ? therefore de- 
feat may be purchased from generals in command. Because early information is 
utilized to procure money, therefore events are arranged in order to yield gain. 
Because money is made out of statesmen's vacillations, therefore statesmen can be 
made to vacillate by promises of money." 

2 The name Griinclers is applied to the originators of a company, who 
deposit the necessary pledges of money or other securities, and thus 
procure the legal authorization under which they organize the working 
corporation. Of late, many such parties have been found guilty of falsi- 
fying securities, and of repaying themselves roundly from the treasury 
of the company for imaginary services of organization. Since the French 
Avar, swindles and bubbles liave been as abundant in Germany as in the 
worst times of inflation in the United States. Besides this, the most worth- 
less American "securities" are palmed off by German speculators upon 
their innocent countrymen. Thirty years ago, the late King Frederic Wil- 
liam IV. of Prussia felt constrained to issue an order forbidding in his army 
a form of bogus speculation which some would have us believe is a special 
vice of democracy : — 

" It has come to my knowledge that even officials lately have taken part in the 
present all-ruling railway speculations, and by signing bonds, and buying certificates 



PEEILS, DUTIES, ETC., OF THE OPENING CENTURY. 251 

their full quota of frauds upon the New-York custom- 
house ? l Let us at least be honest, — honest with our- 
selves, honest toward one another, — and admit that cor- 
ruption is not a special vice of race or institutions, but a 
vice common to human nature under opportunity. It is 
the old plaint of Socrates and Plato about the "human 
race ; " and only when this shall be reformed " will our 
ideal State have a possibility of life, and behold the light 
of day." And, my dear Glaucon, the radical trouble is, 
that human nature refuses to be reformed, but is the one 
constant factor of evil in society, and we must do with it 
what best we can. 

Rahel Yarnhageu, who lived through the eventful ex- 
periences of Prussia in the beginning of the century, and 
whose observation of human nature was remarkably keen, 
wrote, 4 * We must not exact too much of mankind : they 
are all in a bad plight ; full of inbred wrong ; physically 
distorted and maimed; inheriting a nature which they have 
not gifts enough to understand, and therefore to use ; apart 
quite from the consideration of the general politico-social 
deficit. If they do not lie aud boast, that is all that can be 
expected of them : they are always paining as well as misun- 
derstanding each other, because their nature is empty, fool- 
ish, and tiresome, ourselves included in the number. We 
must not, however, overlook our obligation, but see to this 
carefully." Yet Rahel adds, " The nature of great things, 
countries, and peoples, is essentially right when left to 
itself." 

Freedom of will, which is the most sublime, is at the 
same time the most perilous, endowment of human nature. 
Yet it should uot, for that reason, be annihilated or sup- 
pressed, but guided by the sense of responsibility to a 
higher Power. John Adams had the true philosoplry, 
when he wrote to Mrs. Adams, July 3, 1776, " The peo- 

and shares in railway projects, have assumed obligations which often are far above 
their means. As such proceedings show a state of recklessness which is dangerous 
to the respect in which the rank of officials ought to be held, and which is incompati- 
ble with the interest of the state service, I hereby order that such swindling busi- 
ness on the part of officials shall be punished like gambling and debt-contracting 
according to the law of Maxell 29 of this year. The chiefs of departments are to 
inform the officials of my determination in the most strictly private manner. 

(Signed) *'• Feiederich Wilhelui. 

"Saxs Souci, May 14, 1S44." 

1 The adulteration of seeds by mixing quartz ground and dyed is very 
extensively practised in Germany. 



252 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

pie will have unbounded power ; and the people are ex- 
tremely addicted to corruption and venality, as well as the 
great. But I must submit all my hopes and fears to an 
overruling Providence, in which, unfashionable as the 
faith may be, I firmly believe." Even the "Positive Phi- 
losophy" teaches us that there is in the world a moral 
order, and that, sooner or later, society shall work out the 
behests of this invisible Power. 

It must, however, be admitted, that a republican form 
of government affords, in some directions, facilities and 
temptations to official corruption, not common to the best 
ordered monarchies of Europe ; and also, that in the Unit- 
ed States, for a few years past, the revelations of such 
corruption have been frequent, startling, and humiliating. 
But, m order fairly to weigh this evil as against the repub- 
lic, we should ascertain how far it is exceptional, how far 
exaggerated; what is its proportion to the scale of popula- 
tion; what is the array of popular feeling, and of legal and 
moral forces, for arresting and subduing it. 

That corruption is not the normal state of our body 
politic, nor the necessary fruit of our free institutions, is 
shown by the history of the government and of corpora- 
tions down to the period of the war. Before that, pecula- 
tion and corruption were on the scale of the copeck. The 
social demoralization so apt to follow a long war was in- 
creased, in our case, by the fact that it was a civil war, by 
the gigantic and often lavish outlays of the government, 
and by the creation of a fictitious medium of exchange! 
Men became accustomed to enormous figures in expendi- 
ture and debt ; prices went up; speculation was stimulated; 
and the handling of money that the printing-press could 
multiply indefinitely, no doubt obfuscated the old-fash- 
ioned notions of economy, simplicity, and honest gains. 
Contemporary European nations have not escaped such 
demoralizing effects of war ; but in the United States they 
have had larger license, partly because of the very sudden- 
ness and novelty of the experience. 

Again : this corruption, which is in no small degree an 
exceptional phase of political society, has been exagger- 
ated, at least in its impression abroad. The good citizen, 
intent upon reform, exaggerates the evil; the partisan, 



PERILS, DUTIES, ETC., OF THE OPENING CENTURY. 253 

eager for political change, exaggerates it ; the editor, who 
looks to sensations for his profits, exaggerates it ; the 
stock-jobber, who speculates upon rumors and the public 
credulity, exaggerates it ; and the cynic exaggerates it, 
whose profession it is to decry every thing, and to improve 
nothing. Hence one must learn to discount tales of de- 
traction, whether told of individuals or of a people. For 
instance, since I have lived in Berlin, its foremost preacher 
has publicly denounced the city as a Sodom that noth- 
ing but fire from heaven could purify ; and a prominent 
citizen, after serving as a juryman on criminal cases, 
affirms that Berlin is indeed a Sodom in beastly vices and 
crimes. As I would not pretend to be one of the ten ex- 
ceptionally righteous, had I taken this literally, I should 
have hasted to flee from this doomed " city of the plain." 
Three years ago, the foremost orator of Parliament in- 
veighed against stock companies and speculators so round- 
ly, that the Bourse felt called upon to send in a protest to 
the Reichstag. Yet, after what Prince Bismarck said lately, 
in the Reichstag, of the lying propensity of the press and 
of stock-jobbers, whom can we trust ? And, to crown all, 
the Imperial Parliament has twice called attention to the 
immorality of the city, even to the details of photo- 
graphs in shop-windows ; as though the average country 
member was scandalized at the sights and doings of the 
capital, and Berlin was likely to become what every de- 
vout German has imagined Paris to be. Against such 
testimony I dare not maintain that human nature is here 
above its average in large mixed communities ; yet, in all 
the outward decencies and privileges of civilization, Ber- 
lin is a fair average of great capitals, — better than some, 
if not so good as others. I find it only just to the great 
bulk of its population, that one should largely discount 
such sweeping denunciations, whether due to the fervor 
of piety, the energy of patriotism, or the zeal of reform. 
And if I refuse to take without qualification the testimo- 
ny of pulpit, police, and parliament, against the fair fame 
of their own city, I may be indulged in discounting the 
wholesale charges of corruption in my native land,, ex- 
aggerated as these are by the fears and fancies of good 
men, the unscrupulous detractions of parties, the sensa- 



254 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

tional rumors of newspapers, the tricks of stock-jobbers, 
and the sneers of cynics. Much as the Senate of the 
United States has declined in the personal dignity and 
ability of its members, and the statesmanlike character 
of its debates and decisions, yet, if I read that the Senate 
as a body is corrupt, and open to sordid influences, I tell 
over the names of the men I know there, and say, " This 
is a lie." 

An amusing illustration of the extent to which the 
cynical spirit will drive even noble minds in depreciating 
their country and age is found in Mr. Ruskin, in his " Fors 
Clavigera." Having had some sorry experiences of the 
tricks of mechanics and trades-people, he vents his indig- 
nation in this wise : " It is merely through the quite bes- 
tial ignorance of the moral law in which the English 
bishops have contentedly allowed their flocks to be 
brought up, that any of the modern English conditions of 
trade are possible ; for the modern English conditions of 
trade are, so far as I have had any experience of them, 
simply dishonest." Having charged upon the bench of 
bishops the fraud of substituting sham ornaments glued 
upon his bookcases for the solid carving which he had 
paid for, Mr. Ruskin uses that same unlucky pot of glue 
to stick upon the English nation his pontifical sentence of 
major excommunication : " I do verily perceive and admit, 
in convinced sorrow, that I live in the midst of a nation 
of thieves and murderers ; that everybody round me is 
trying to rob everybody else, and that not bravely and 
strongly, but in the most cowardly and loathsome ways of 
lying trade ; that Englishman is now merely another word 
for blackleg and swindler, and English honor and courtesy 
changed to the sneaking and the smiles of a whipped 
peddler, an inarticulate Autolycus, with a steam hurdy- 
gurdy instead of a voice." 1 

I am not wanting in respect for Mr. Ruskin as a critic 
in morals as well as in art, and a master of English style ; 
but this oracular entheasm of his in the " Fors " reminds 
one of Horace's insanire carta rat lone modoque. If, how- 
ever, upon the strength of Mr. Ruskin's piety and patriot- 
ism, I should take up his notion of English corruption, I 

1 Fors Clavigera, October. 1875. 



PERILS, DUTIES, ETC., OF THE OPENING CENTUEY. 255 

should do no worse than the Englishman who mistakes 
the cynical severity of " The Nation " 1 for a sober repre- 
sentation of American society. As it happens, I know 
England too well to be imposed upon even by so great a 
name. Setting aside my own countrymen, — who are just 
now under arraignment, — I have found the English the 
most honest and straightforward, the most manly and 
upright, among peoples. This is saying no more, indeed, 
than that Englishmen were worthy to be our ancestors. 
The English have their foibles ; but, so far as I know, they 
have but a single vice that can be said to be universal 
and incurable : this is their drawling, sing-song, slovenly 
way of speaking our noble mother-tongue. In this their 
" corruption " is, I fear, hopeless. 

John Adams, like all men of vehement moods, had 
something of Mr. Raskin's cynical intolerance. In 1776, 
in the midst of his enthusiasm for independence, some fit 
of indigestion moved him to write to his wife, " The 
spirit of venality you mention is the most dreadful and 
alarming enemy America has to oppose : it is as rapacious 
and insatiable as the grave. . . . This predominant avarice 
will ruin America, if she is ever ruined. If God Almighty 
does not interfere by his grace to control this universal 
idolatry to the Mammon of unrighteousness, we shall be 
given up to the chastisements of his judgments. I am 
ashamed of the age I live in." Whatever the venality 
was that Adams thus deplored, this could not have been 
due to republican independence, since that was but just 
thought of, and was in a deadly struggle for existence. It 
is more than likely that Adams had in view the venality 
of British colonists who were willing to sell to the British 
Government the liberties of America for office or gold. 
Such avarice might, indeed, have threatened to ruin Ameri- 

1 As a critic of art, literature, science, morals, and affairs, the Nation 
is a journal of which every American has reason to he proud. Yet I ven- 
ture' to suggest to its conductors, that the excessive use of satire weakens 
the effect "of that instrument of reform; that the hahit of treating persons 
and topics in a serio-comic way cheapens praise and blame alike; and that 
an extravagant Caudle-style of lecturing misleads foreigners, who cannot 
see behind the curtain. If the Nation were compelled to spend as much 
time as I do in explaining its burlesque and satire to the Teutonic mind, 
and in showing that its political sarcasms are not to be taken as Bible 
truths, it would either label its articles for the foreign market, or have 
recourse to plain, straightforward English in self-defence. 



256 CENTENNIAL OP AMEBIC AK INDEPENDENCE. 

ca ; but this was not " a vice of democracy." In looking 
back, we see how morbid and exaggerated were the fears 
of that incorruptible patriot ; and a century hence the 
American people will look back with a smile upon the 
evil prophets of to-day, just as Englishmen will laugh at 
their Cassandras, from Ruskin to Carlyle. 

Still the shameful fact remains, that, in American politics, 
corruption is rife ; and one is hardly startled by any new 
exposure. If, however, we analyze it, we find it chiefly 
under three forms, and these fairly within reach of reme- 
dies : (1) The abuse of official trust for private gains ; (2) 
Combinations to defraud the government of revenue ; and 
(3) Agencies for bribing legislative bodies in the interest 
of individuals or of corporations. For the last a remedy 
is already found in a constitutional provision, adopted by 
many States, against any form of private or special legisla- 
tion in this category of cases. The second both govern- 
ment and people are now roused to ferret out and punish ; 
and many of the chief conspirators and criminals have 
already been brought to justice. The unanimity of par- 
ties, press, and public, in hunting out the guilty, is a 
healthy sign : it shows that the corruption festered by the 
fever-heat of war is sporadic, not endemic ; that the dis- 
ease is of the surface, not in any vital part ; and though 
it seems, of a sudden, to have broken out all over, its area 
is limited as compared with the whole body politic. The 
people are largely to blame for the partisan blindness on 
the one hand, and the neglect of affairs on the other, that 
have given to rogues the opportunity and the temptation 
to cheat and steal ; but they are not rogues and swindlers 
in their private affairs, nor willing to be ruled by such 
in public affairs, if they can help it. 1 The suspicion of 

1 A German lawyer, now of Berlin, who spent many years in profes- 
sional practice in New York, has told me that no American client ever dis- 
puted his hill, or failed to pay it; that often the fee was proffered in 
advance: hut in Germany his fees are often disputed, and payment evaded. 

A German hanker has expressed to me his amazement at the enormous 
transactions on an American Change, with nothing more binding than the 
word of mouth, always sacredly kept. 

The late Pelatiah Perit, Esq.', long president of the New-York Chamber 
of Commerce, and thoroughly acquainted with the mercantile community, 
and also with the best foreign society, was accustomed to say that the 
merchants of New Y^ork were among the most honorable and high-minded 
men in the world. 

During the late war, in order to enforce the use of " greenbacks " as a 



PERILS, DUTIES, ETC., OF THE OPENING CENTURY. 257 

malfeasance in office is a bar to one's political fntnre that 
few men of ambition are bold enough to encounter. The 
seeming excess of political corruption in the United States 
as compared with some other forms of government lies 
more in the greater publicity than in the higher ratio. 1 
And it should not be forgotten, that, in a popular govern- 
ment, the exposure of evil is a part of the remedy. Ex- 

legal tender, the government withdrew the protection of law from con- 
tracts made in gold. Nevertheless, the importer was obliged to meet his 
obligations in gold, and. to make contracts npon that basis. Here was an 
opportunity for rogues to dispute or repudiate a specie contract as having 
no validity in law; but, though such contracts were made to the extent of 
hundreds of millions of dollars, there was no attempt to dishonor claims 
that could not be legally enforced. Mercantile honor was stronger than 
written law. My authority for this is one of the heaviest importing firms 
of New York. 

1 The partisan clamor of the past few years, and the notoriety of cer- 
tain cases of political dishonor, have created the impression abroad, that 
fraud and corruption are on the increase in American official life, and that 
the nation is hopelesly corrupt. But the speech of Attorney-Gen. Taft, in 
New York, Oct. 25, 187(5, puts a different face upon the matter : — 

" There is a record kept in the treasury department of the United-States Govern- 
ment, in which are entered all the pecuniary transactions. — all the receipts and all the 
disbursements of the moneys of the government, — and which shows infallibly how 
much has been lost in the handling, whether by stealing, or corruption, or mistake, or 
neglect. On the call of the Senate, made in the present year, that record was produced. 
It shows in general the following facts: that during the administration of Gen. Jack- 
son, which lasted for eight years, the average loss upon every thousand dollars col- 
lected and disbursed during that time was $10.55, or about one per cent; that, in 
the administration of Martin Van Buren, the loss was $21 00 and upward, or a little 
more than two percent; that, during all the succeeding Democratic administrations, 
the losses were approaching $10.00, until we eoni3 down to that of James Buchanan, 
in which the losses upon the receipts and disbursements averaged $6.98 on every 
thousand dollars. That same record shows that during the first Republican admin- 
istration, under Mr. Lincoln, the losses upon all the transactions of the government 
— all the receipts and disbursements — averaged $1.41 on the thousand dollars, in 
place of f!6.9S, which represented the losses in the time of Mr. Buchanan; and that 
loss has been reduced, in the administration of Gen. Grant, to forty cents on the thou- 
sand dollars in his first administration, and twenty-six cents on the thousand dollars 
in the second and current administration, in place of $6.98 under Mr. Buchanan. 
This record is indisputable, and leaves no more to be said on the subject of corruption 
in the receipt and disbursements of the funds of the nation. It is an effectual, ever- 
lasting refutation of the charge, that the government under Republican administration 
has been or is honeycombed with corruption. It is probable that the present admin- 
istration of our government has reduced the losses, the defalcations, and the steal- 
ings, to their lowest terms; that the method of doing business, and of recording 
transactions in books, has been perfected to such a degree, that it is hardly to be ex- 
pected that greater perfection will hereafter be attained. Twenty-six cents on a thou- 
sand dollars in all the transactions of the government is so small a loss, that the best 
governments in Europe have failed to attain to it." 

I read this statement to an officer of the British Government, who him- 
self has to do with large financial transactions. "But," said he, "ought 
you not to be ashamed of any corruption? Stealing should not be a matter 
of percentage." — " Quite right," my friend; " but let us beware of Phari- 
saism. You in England abhor official bribery, and breach of trust; but 
you have just told me facts concerning the social morals of men in your 
highest posts of judicial honor, which, if they could be told of the Chief 
Justice of the United States, would compel him to retire from his office 
within twenty-four hours. Each nation has its own way of airing its con- 
scientiousness, and its own besetting types of depravity'." 



258 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

posure is a disinfectant ; and like carbolic acid, though it 
makes the atmosphere more offensive for a time, is a sign 
that the sanitary police are doing their duty. 

The first form of corruption — the abuse of official 
trust for private gains — is more difficult to deal with than 
either of the others : it can often be concealed for long ; 
its success tempts to repetition ; and it can sometimes use 
the machinery of party, and even of the law, as a screen. 
Far worse than individual cases of defalcation and pecula- 
tion is that s} T stem of rings which has become the scandal 
of great cities, and, in some instances, of legislative and 
executive bodies. In great cities, this finds its fatal facili- 
ty in the basis of suffrage and the largely irresponsible 
character of the constituency. Commercial, political, and 
manufacturing capitals attract to themselves the best and 
the worst elements from the whole country; and, as we 
have seen b} T the criminal statistics, the worst elements of 
the foreign population gravitate to the same centres. 
These all are voters ; and, so long as the city authorities 
will favor the poor at the expense of the rich, the poor 
care little how property-holders are robbed by unjust taxa- 
tion, or cheated by wasteful expenditure. The tendency 
of well-to-do people to make the city simply a place of 
business, and fix their homes in some rural suburb, is fast 
leaving the political control of cities to those who have 
the least risk in their financial prosperity or their public 
reputation ; and the danger is, that city corruption will go 
on from bad to worse. Boston has found a remedy in the 
annexation of the rural homes of its sterling population, 
thus preserving their right to vote in city affairs. Xew 
York is crippled as to such a remedy by its physical condi- 
tions ; and the spasmodic efforts of leading citizens to rid 
the city of rings, though for a time successful, do not work 
a radical cure of the evil. How to secure the wise and good 
government of great cities is a problem as yet unsolved, per- 
haps hopeless under democratic institutions with universal 
suffrage. But why permit a suffrage that enables loafers 
and ragamuffins to vote away property they had no hand 
in creating, and have no interest in preserving ? What 
" natural and inalienable " right have the shiftless to ad- 
minister upon the estates of the thrifty? To preserve 



PEEILS, DUTIES, ETC., OF THE OPEXIXG CEXTURY. 259 

their own credit, to retain the really " working-class " of 
citizens, — the merchants, bankers, manufacturers, mechan- 
ics, who create capital by labor of hand and brain, — our 
cities must provide, that while the civic administration is 
chosen, as now, by common suffrage, there shall be a dis- 
tinct board, chosen only by those who have taxable prop- 
erty, whose sanction shall be necessary to any transaction 
affecting property, and to any levy or appropriation ex- 
ceeding a given rate. Then every man of property will 
have a motive to look after his own interests in the elec- 
tion of such a board, and the board cannot hope to elude 
responsibility by an appeal to a miscellaneous and irrespon- 
sible constituency. The interests of property are, in their 
very nature, " hostages to society " for such municipal 
regulations in regard to streets, fire, water-supply, police, 
&c, as will best serve the community at large. More- 
over, by this system, women who are independent property- 
holders can be admitted to vote upon matters in which 
they have an undoubted concern, without entering upon 
the debatable ground of woman's suffrage in the field of 
general politics. This is a very different thing from mak- 
ing property a qualification for suffrage : it simply denies to 
mere manhood suffrage the right of disposing of property 
not its own. In some States, special statutes now confine 
to tax-payers the right of voting money for improvements. 
For the country at large, as a check upon official corruption, 
two measures seem indispensable, — to remove the civil ser- 
vice from the caprices of party politics and the chances 
of mediocrity by making it competitive, and permanent 
during capability or good behavior ; and to pay good sala- 
ries, and assure a retiring pension, any malfeasance to be 
punished with dismissal, fine, or imprisonment, and loss of 
civil rights ; in a word, to reduce the temptations to wrong 
to a minimum, and raise to the highest point the motives 
of dignity and honor. At a moment when the diplomatic 
service requires to be looked after on the point of pecu- 
niary honor, it is the meanest of party frauds to reduce its 
salaries below the dignity of a gentleman. 1 

1 When I gave this lecture in London, I paid a compliment to the 
English nation for its freedom from official corruption and dishonor. Sir 
George Campbell, M.P., late governor of Bengal, who presided, rose and 



260 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

Macaulay, who knew what it was to toil for the bare ne- 
cessaries of life, and who resolutely banished himself from 
England for five years, that, by his earnings in the Indian 
service, he might lay up enough for future comfort, wrote 
frankly to Lord Lansdowne, " Without a competence, it is 
not very easy for a public man to be honest : it is almost 
impossible for him to be thought so." We are too apt in 
America to place public men under temptation by denying 
them a competence, and then to weaken the salutary fear 
of public opinion by creating around them an atmosphere 
of suspicion in advance. This pernicious habit of imput- 
ing dishonesty to public men was recently exposed by 
li The London Spectator " in a philosophical warning by 
which Americans should profit : — 

" The Due Decazes said openly from his place in the tribune, that 
it would have been impossible for him or any other minister in 
France to make such a roup as the purchase of the Canal shares, be- 
cause he would have been suspected by his opponents of making it 
for his own pecuniary advantage ; and his audience laughed an assent. 
So deeply rooted in Paris is this form of distrust, that it exerci 
di'tinite political influence, and sometimes cripples the boldest plans 
of otherwise resolute men. Xo assertion of the kind is too wild to 
receive some credence. The]-:' are men in Vienna in reputable posi- 
tions who will tell you gravely that the defeats of the Austrian army 
■were due to money dexterously employed ; and a wild story of an 
archbishop whom Bismarck bought, and the Emperor ordered to be 
shot, was related in the writer's presence, without an idea on the 
speaker's part that he was in the least drawing- upon the credulity of 

said, "The courtesy of the lecturer lias rendered us a compliment that we 
do not deserve. We have corruption in this country, enough of it, both 
political and official. I know it, and yon all know ir. Here we keep it 
rather private; but our A merican cousins wash their dirty linen out of 
doors, and that is the chief difference between us." Several members of 
Parliament and other public men were present; but no one dissented from 
this statement. Soon after, the public was startled by the revelation that 
an English nobleman, a member of the ministry, had accepted a hundred 
qualifying shares in consideration of the use of his name as director in a 
company that turned out to be an enormous swindle. He had done pre- 
cisely tlie same thing that had brought such scandal on the American 
minister, and had precisely the same excuses to offer. A gentleman con- 
nected with the government told me that a commission was once sent out 
to investigate rumor-; against a diplomatic agent in the East. They found 
him guilty of almost every crime in the Decalogue: but as he was a puta- 
tive son of Lord P , and had friends in high quarters, he was quietly 

dropped, and the affair hushed up. Such cases furnish no cover for 
American delinquencies; but they do show that corruption is not special to 
republics. A few rogues bring great scandal on the country, but the " in- 
terviewers " far more. Punch (July 29, 1876), significantly said, "There is 
still one place where ill-gotten gain has a bad smell: that is on the hands 
of a minister, when once attention has been called to it." 



PERILS, DUTIES, ETC., OF THE OPEXING CEXTUEY. 261 

his audience. In Pesth they will tell you stories of contracts, which, 
if you believed them, would make you believe the high Austrian 
aristocracy — who, to do them justice, never think about money even 
when they ought — a gang of peculators; and discontented Magyars 
will prove to you, if you have the patience, that every leader in Hun- 
gary, except Deak, has at some time or other been sold. Muscovites 
in a gossiping mood explain every thing by crime, and no more be- 
lieve that an official, however highly placed, can keep his hands clear 
of pelf, than an Englishman can believe a Jesuit honest, or a Greek 
free from political guile. Political society is honeycombed with sus- 
picion, till in every capital of Europe, except Berlin, great men are 
compelled to defend themselves, either by a caution which makes 
them alike weak and sensitive, or by a cynical callousness which 
ends in the first cause of tyranny, — contempt for the judgment and 
the motives of ordinary mankind. 1 

The indiscriminate suspicion of corruption may prove 
more perilous to the public honor and safety than is 
actual corruption detected and denounced. Many a pub- 
lic man in the United States might break all the com- 
mandments, and yet not be half so vile as his political 
opponents had pictured him during his candidacy. If 
" the price of liberty is eternal vigilance," universal sus- 
picion is a premium for tyranny. When all men distrust 
one another, the first bold usurper will master the whole. 
Our civil service should be above temptation, and beyond 
suspicion. Prussia has such a service. The pay, indeed, 
is not large ; but this is graduated to the economical habits 
of the people. The service is honorable, and brings a cer- 
tain social consideration : it admits of promotion as a re- 
ward of merit, and it insures a pension for the decline of 
life. Above a certain grade, an official position in Prussia 
is evidence of a university education, or equivalent schol- 
arly attainments. 

" What in the w^orld will you do with these thousands 
of law-students now in your universities ? " I asked a 
professor. " Oh ! " he replied, " very many of them have 
no thought of making the law their profession ; but there 
is constant need of jurists in all departments of our public 
service. In the administration of schools, churches, rail- 
ways, banks, post-offices, customs, consulates, every- 
where there must be at hand some one who is well versed 
in the law ; and hence this legal training is an avenue to 

i Spectator, Oct. 28, 1876. 



262 CENTENNIAL OE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

the higher civil service." Now, such a service as this, so 
admirably planned and so thoroughly disciplined, must be 
rooted in the constitution of society. We could not hope 
to reproduce it by a bare act of Congress, or the will of a 
single administration: the people must set themselves 
resolutely to build up a sound and stable system for the 
support of the national life. It is often said, that to re- 
quire a competitive examination for appointments to the 
civil service would work injustice to the average citizen 
by excluding him from the right to hold office, and restrict- 
ing this to the favored and educated few. Now, I do not 
dispute the right of any man to be eligible to office : I only 
maintain that he shall make himself eligible ; that the 
people shall refuse to intrust their affairs to any man's 
ignorance or incompetence ; and that no party shall have 
the opportunity of thrusting ignorance and incompetence 
into places of public trust for mere political services. 
Moreover, since in every State education is now so cheap 
and liberal, it would be no hardship to require that every 
candidate for the public service shall be educated up to a 
certain standard. The poor man would thus have before 
him an object of ambition in training a son for a service 
that would be also an elevation honorable in itself, and 
giving a lifelong position and support. To insure the 
separation of the service from political partisanship, eveiy 
one accepting a place in the civil service should thence- 
forth cease to be a voter, and should forfeit place and 
pension upon taking part in politics. 

If the loftiness of the Prussian system would deter us 
from attempting that, we may take encouragement from 
the English system, which is a thing of recent growth, 
and already yields satisfactory results. In 1853 the minis- 
try called upon Parliament to enact " that a nomination 
for the civil service of India should thenceforward be- 
come the reward of industry and ability, instead of being 
the price of political support, or the appanage of private 
interest and family connection." Macaulay advocated a 
s} T stem of competitive examination upon the ground that 
he who has proved diligent and successful in prescribed 
studies shows the qualities needed for the public service. 
The proposal, that the governor-general should have the 
power of appointing, he met as follows : — 



PERILS, DUTIES, ETC., OF THE OPENING CENTURY. 263 

" There is something plausible in the proposition that you should 
allow him to take able men wherever he finds them ; but my firm 
opinion is, that the day on which the civil service of India ceases to 
be a close service will be the beginning of an age of jobbing, — the 
most monstrous, the most extensive, and the most perilous system of 
abuse in the distribution of patronage that we have ever witnessed. 
Every governor-general would take out with him, or would soon be 
followed by, a crowd of nephews, first and second cousins, friends, 
sons of friends, and political hangers-on ; while every steamer arriv- 
ing from the Red Sea would carry to India some adventurer bearing 
with him testimonials from people of influence in England. The 
governor-general would have it in his power to distribute residences, 
seats at the council board, seats at the revenue board, — places of 
from four thousand pounds to six thousand pounds a year, — upon 
men without the least acquaintance with the character or habits of 
the natives, and with only such knowledge of the language as would 
enable them to call for another bottle of pale ale, or desire their at- 
tendant to pull the punka faster. In what way could you put a 
check on such proceedings ? Would you, the House of Commons, 
control them ? Have you been so successful in extirpating nepotism 
at your own door, and in excluding all abuses from Whitehall and 
Somerset House, that you should fancy that you could establish 
purity in countries the situation of which you do not know, and the 
names of which you cannot pronounce ? I believe most fully, that, 
instead of purity resulting from that arrangement to India, England 
itself would soon be tainted; and that before long, when a son or 
brother of some active member of this House went out to Calcutta, 
carrying with him a letter of recommendation from the prime-minister 
to the governor-general, that letter would be really a bill of exchange 
drawn on the revenues of India for value received in parliamentary 
support in this House. 

" We are not without experience on this point. We have only to 
look back to those shameful and lamentable years which followed 
the first establishment of our power in Bengal. If you turn to any 
poet, satirist, or essayist of those times, you may see in what manner 
that system of appointment operated. There was a tradition in Cal- 
cutta, that, during Lord Clive's second administration, a man came 
out with a strong letter of recommendation from one of the ministers. 
Lord Clive said in his peculiar way, ' Well, chap, how much do you 
want ? Will a hundred thousand pounds do ? ' The person replied, 
that he should be delighted, if, by laborious service, he could obtain 
that competence. Lord Clive at once wrote out an order for the sum, 
and told the applicant to leave India by the ship he came in, and, 
once back in England, to remain there. I think that the story is very 
probable : and I also think that India ought to be grateful for the 
course which Lord Clive pursued ; for, though he pillaged the people 
of Bengal to enrich this lucky adventurer, yet, if the man had re- 
ceived an appointment, they would have been pillaged and misgov- 
erned as well. Against evils like these there is one security, and, I 
believe, but one ; and that is, that the civil service should be kept 
close." 



264 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

A member of the present government, who went to In- 
dia in 1875 on an official tour of inspection, expressed to 
me his great satisfaction with the Indian service, in its 
punctuality, thoroughness, and efficiency, and especially in 
the absence of any trace of peculation in a country where 
the temptations are great, and the opportunities easy. 

An attempt to apply the same system of competitive 
examination to the civil service of England was made by 
the ministry in 1854 ; but this met with the same sort of 
opposition in Parliament which the civil-service reform 
has encountered in Congress. " Ver}^ few leading poli- 
ticians," says Mr. Trevelyan, "had their hearts in the 
matter. It was one thing for them to deprive the East- 
India directors of their patronage, and quite another to 
surrender their own. The outcry of the dispensers and 
expectants of public employment was loud and fierce ; and 
the advocates of the new system were forced to admit 
that its hour had not come." That system, however, at 
last prevailed ; and Mr. Trevelyan testifies, that " to this, 
more than to any other cause, we owe it that our political 
morality grows purer as our political institutions become 
more popular, — a system which the most far-seeing of 
American statesmen already regard witli a generous 
envy." l The success of Great Britain in carrying 
through a reform which thirty years ago was as much 
needed in England as it now is in the United States, and 
which triumphed at Westminster over the same obstacles 
that resist it at Washington, should determine the Ameri- 
can people to secure the same. 

Meanwhile, unless official corruption is punished as fast 
as exposed, there is danger that the exposure will so 
familiarize the public with this form of iniquity, that it 
shall lose something of its grossness. And, indeed, there 
are not wanting critics who charge corruption in high 
places to the prevailing tone of luxury among the people. 
Now, this word " luxury " is one of the most indefinite 
of terms, its application being graded by circumstances of 
individuals and of society for which there can be no 
common measure. You know the story of the pietist 
who took her Christian sister to account for wearing 

i Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, chap. xiii. 



PERILS, DUTIES, ETC., OF THE OPENING CENTURY. 2G5 

feathers in her hat. "But," said the accused, "my 
feathers are not so costly nor so showy as the flower- 
garden on your hat." — "Well," retorted the first, "we 
must draw the line between the church and the world 
somewhere ; and I draw it at feathers." Some of our 
domestic manufacturers denote certain imported articles 
luxuries, and would have these heavily taxed in order 
that they may produce and sell the same at a higher 
rate; as, for instance, Connecticut tobacco for Havana 
cigars. And, by the new custom-house regulations, 
every lady who shall take home from Europe more than 
six pairs of gloves, more than two new dresses (already 
made and worn), one hat, and one set of jewelry, shall 
be summarily convicted of seeking to corrupt the coun- 
try with luxury, and fined accordingly. To pay a thou- 
sand dollars for a picture would for me be a bit of ex- 
travagance that would justify my friends in sending me 
to an insane-asylum; but it was no extravagance in my 
old neighbor — the richest merchant of New York, and a 
public benefactor — to outbid European noblemen and 
galleries, and pay seventy-five thousand dollars — which 
might represent his income for as many days — for a bit 
of canvas four and a half feet by two and a half, on 
which Meissonier had painted the battle of Eylau. And 
here, by the way, we must hold criticism to its proper 
bounds. The critic who berates us for want of culture ; 
who tell us that the American is only a merchant, and 
worships the dollar ; who, like the architect of the Lon- 
don school board, with such profundity of self-assertion 
issues his dictum, that " America is profoundly ignorant 
of art," l — this same censor of our sordid tastes shall not 
be permitted to whisk about and rebuke our luxury, 
when the American merchant shows the best possible 
taste in giving his dollars over all competitors to possess 
the best works of art. After all, does there not lurk in 
much of this criticism the feeling that a republican citi- 
zen has no right to be a cultivated gentleman, and show 
his culture beside that of nobles and princes? If only 
a duke had bought the Meissonier, what a noble use 
of wealth in the patronage of art ! For a man to live 

i Mr. E. R. Robson, Builder, Oct. 9, 1875. 



266 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

beyond his means is extravagance : for him to do this 
knowingly and persistently is criminal. The American 
people do need a caution against living too fast, — a habit 
encouraged by the spirit of speculation ; but the peril 
of luxury, like that of sectionalism and party-spirit, the 
republic has more than once survived. In 1786 Jeffer- 
son wrote, " I consider the extravagance which has seized 
my countrymen as a more baneful evil than Toryism was 
during the war. Would a missionary appear who would 
make frugality the basis of his religious system, and go 
through the land preaching it up as the only road to sal- 
vation, I would join his school." l His Letters from Paris 
in 1787 are full of lamentation over the tales of extrava- 
gance he heard from America. " From these accounts," 
he writes, " I look back to the time of the war as a time 
of happiness and enjoyment, when, amidst the privation of 
many things not essential to happiness, we could not run 
in debt, because nobody would trust us ; when we prac- 
tised by necessity the maxim of buying nothing but what 
we had money in our pockets to pay for, — a maxim which, 
of all others, lays the broadest foundation for happiness. 
. . . The eternal and bitter strictures on our conduct 
which teem in every London paper, and are copied 
from them into others, fill me with anxiety on this sub- 
ject." 2 Jefferson was at that time minister plenipotenti- 
ary of the Confederation. Franklin, who had preceded 
him in this capacity from the Colonial Congress, be- 
wailed the growth of luxury even during the war of the 
Revolution. In 1779 he wrote to John Jay, then presi- 
dent of Congress, " The extravagant luxury of our coun- 
try in the midst of all its distresses is to me amazing. 
When the difficulties are so great to find remittances to 
pay for the arms and ammunition necessary for our 
defence, I am astonished and vexed to find, upon inquiry, 
that much the greatest part of the Congress interest-bills 
came to pay for tea, and a great part of the remainder is 
ordered to be laid out in gew-gaws and superfluities." 

I have already quoted the plaint of John Adams over 
the spirit of venality in 1776, and have shown that this 
spirit was not then the offspring of republican institu- 

1 Works, i. 550. 2 Ibid., ii. 191, 193, 219; iii. 285. 






PERILS, DUTIES, ETC., OF THE OPENING CENTURY. 267 

tions. Forty years later, when Jefferson was still harping 
on luxury, Adams took a more sober view : " Will you 
tell me how to prevent riches from becoming the effects 
of temperance and industry? Will you tell me how to 
prevent riches from producing luxury ? " l 

In 1784, after peace had been declared, Franklin was 
again moved to write upon " the growing luxury of the 
States, which gave so much offence to English travellers, 
without exception." But his economic philosophy now 
came to his aid ; and he met the question with his unfail- 
ing good sense and humor. " I have not yet, indeed, 
thought of a remedy for luxury : I am not sure, that, in a 
great State, it is capable of a remedy, nor that the evil is 
in itself alwaj^s so great as it is represented. ... Is not the 
hope of being one day able to purchase and enjoy luxuries 
a great spur to labor and industry ? . . . The skipper of a 
shallop employed between Cape May and Philadelphia had 
done us some small service for which he refused to be paid. 
My wife, understanding that he had a daughter, sent her 
a present of a new-fashioned cap. Three years after, this 
skipper being at my house with an old farmer of Cape 
May, he mentioned the cap, and how much his daughter 
had been pleased with it. c But,' said he, 4 it proved a 
dear cap to our congregation. When my daughter ap- 
peared with it at meeting, it was so much admired, that 
all the girls resolved to get such caps from Philadelphia ; 
and my wife and I computed that the whole could not 
have cost less than a hundred pounds.' — ' True,' said the 
farmer; 'but you do not tell all the story. I think, the 
cap was, nevertheless, an advantage to us ; for it was 
the first thing that put our girls upon knitting worsted 
mittens for sale at Philadelphia, that they might have 
wherewithal to buy caps and ribbons there ; and you know 
that that industry has continued, and is likely to continue 
and increase to a much greater value, and answer better 
purposes.' Upon the whole," adds Franklin, U I was 
more reconciled to this little piece of luxury, since not 
only the girls were made happier by having fine caps, but 
the Philadelphians by the supply of warm mittens." 2 

i Letter to Jefferson, 1819; Adams's Works, x. 386. 
2 Life of Franklin, by Bigelow, iii. 27i-27G. 



268 CEXTEXXTAL OF AMEBIC AX IXDEPEXDEXCE. 

From all these reminiscences, it is plain that the press, 
foreign criticism, manners and customs, the principles of 
political economy, the love of good living, and, to cap 
the whole, the taste of woman for the newest and the 
"best, or at least as good as her neighbors, are to-day just 
what they were a century ago ; and the country is no more 
likely to be ruined by luxury now than then. 

But there is one luxury the people of the United States 
cannot afford, though they have begun to indulge in it at 
the risk of the nation's life : that is, the luxury of a phi- 
lanthropy, or a political philosophy, or a partisan and dema- 
gogic zeal, that makes every man a voter on the attainment 
of his majority, with no test or question as to his personal 
fitness for this grave responsibility. How far Jefferson, 
"the apostle of democracy,*' was from the notion of uni- 
versal suffrage, or of suffrage as a natural right, I have 
shown in the Second Lecture. No such notion found place 
either in the Declaration of Independence, or in the origi- 
nal Constitution of the United States. The first approach 
toward universal suffrage was in the Act of Congress of 
1790, which provided that any foreigner could be natural- 
ized after a residence of two years. From this advanced 
position Congress receded in 1795 to a requirement of fiwe 
years' residence, and in 1798 to fourteen years, but again, 
in 1802, fixed the period at five years. But, though Con- 
gress has power to prescribe the terms of citizenship for 
foreigners, the conditions of suffrage remain within the 
prerogative of the individual States; and, though the 
general qualifications arc the same in all, there is consid- 
erable diversity upon minor points. 

The emancipation of the slaves introduced a new phase 
into the problem of suffrage. It was foreseen that the 
Southern States might deny suffrage to the freedmen, and 
thus hold them without remedy as a subject class, and 
even oppress them as pariahs having no recognized place 
in the social system. To provide against this mischief, it 
was sought to clothe the former slaves with the right of 
suffrage, that they might defend their liberty by their politi- 
cal action ; but, lest the Supreme Court should overrule 
any attempt to vest in the United States a direct power 
over suffrage in the States, the Fourteenth Amendment, 



PERILS, DUTIES r ETC., OF THE OPENING CENTURY. 269 

intended to secure the suffrage to the negro, was framed 
with a circumlocution that has already proved mischievous. 
The Fifteenth Amendment is explicit enough : " The 
right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be 
denied or abridged by the United States on account of 
race, color, or previous condition of servitude." But this 
does not touch the action of individual States. The Four- 
teenth Amendment, however, attempts in a back-handed 
way to influence that action. In the first place, it declares 
that " all persons born or naturalized in the United States, 
and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the 
United States, and of the State in which they reside." 
Thus far, the article simply places all citizens upon an 
equality of civil rights, with no reference *to their political 
status. Then, without declaring that every citizen shall 
have a vote, the amendment goes on to provide, that " when 
the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors 
for President and Vice-President of the United States, 
representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial 
officers of a State, or the members of the legislature there- 
of, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, 
being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United 
States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in 
rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation therein 
shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of 
such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male 
citizens twenty-one years of age in such State." Now, 
nothing could be farther from a tendency to crime or re- 
bellion than learning to read and write ; yet, should a State 
insist upon this rudimentary education as a condition of 
suffrage, its representation in Congress must be reduced 
in the ratio of the number of male adults who cannot 
read and write to the whole number of male adults in the 
State. 1 Did ever a people so stultify themselves as did 
the people of the United States when they adopted the 
Fourteenth Amendment ? For one, as a lifelong opponent 
of slavery, I protested against this abuse of emancipa- 
tion, and, as a friend of the negro, refused to join in the 

1 In point of fact, Connecticut denies suffrage to those who are "unable 
to read an article in the Constitution, or any section of the statutes of the 
State;" and Massachusetts, to those "unable to read the Constitution in 
the English language, and write their names." 



270 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

cry for " negro suffrage." Impartial suffrage should have 
been the watchword, — suffrage open to all, upon the same 
conditions. But if slavery had been what was charged 
upon it, if its tendency had been to imbrute the slave, to 
keep him ignorant of things that every child should know, 
to make him deceitful, dishonest, immoral, then it was 
absurd to suppose that emancipation could at once trans- 
form him into a man worthy to be intrusted with the high 
interests of political society. And the advocates of the 
ballot as an educating power overlooked the fact, that, 
while millions of ignorant creatures are being educated 
how to use it, they are all the while using it, in the actual 
government of society, at the greatest peril to its liberties 
and their own. Had the amendment been made to read, 
" Or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebel- 
lion or other crime, for inability to read and explain the 
Constitution of the United States in the English tongue, 
and for entering into an ecclesiastical or other combination 
against the sovereignty of the State," then the natural and 
legal rights of all men would have been secured ; suffrage 
would have been a motive to self-improvement, a prize to be 
won ; and we should have been forearmed against the degra- 
dation of ignorance in our politics, the attempt to establish 
foreign nationalities within the pale of United-States citi- 
zenship, and the intrigues of sectarians to subject the gov- 
ernment to ecclesiastical control. But philanthropy took 
up the role of perpetuating the negro as a caste ; and re- 
publicanism, that of using him as a make-weight in elec- 
tions. 

How this educating process of suffrage has worked in 
those Southern States where nearly one-third of the popu- 
lation over ten years old cannot read, the past ten years 
of violence and misrule, of fraud and corruption, wasting 
the very soil with all that grows and lives upon it, bear 
melancholy witness. It has been one long saturnalia of 
barbarism led by demagogism. In opening the polls to 
the freedman who did not know his A B C, we opened 
them ecpially to the European who could not read a line 
of English, and to the Asiatic who brought with him the 
castes and superstitions of the Eastern world. Now that 
our own egregious folly has brought this peril to the 



PERILS, DUTIES, ETC., OF THE OPENING CENTURY. 271 

republic, the cry of political clanger sharpens the appeal 
to religious and philanthropic zeal to counteract it by 
education. But this is repairing the timbers of the bridge 
while the foundations are being swept away by the flood. 
Either a limitation of suffrage by a strict educational test, 
or compulsory education in every State ; and I see not 
well how to get the one without the other. 

Prof. W. G. Sumner, whose studies in political science 
entitle his. opinions to serious respect, has said, "Reform 
does not seem to me to lie in restricting the suffrage, or in 
other arbitrary measures of a revolutionary nature. They 
are impossible, if they were desirable. Experience is the 
only teacher whose authority is admitted in this school ; 
and I look to experience to teach us all, that the power 
of election must be used to select competent men to deal 
with questions, and not to indirectly decide the questions 
themselves." l But what is there of an " arbitrary " nature 
in insisting that every man who would vote upon public 
affairs shall be able to read, so as to inform himself of the 
principles and aims of parties and candidates? And what 
could be more "revolutionary," more utterly subversive 
of the government as established by the fathers, than this 
letting in the ignorant and irresponsible masses to share 
in its administration ? The " revolution " that would 
transform Jefferson's ideal government of a " natural aris- 
tocracy " chosen by " men of ripe years and sane mind, 
who either pay or fight for their country," into a moboc- 
racy of ignorance, idleness, bluster, and fraud, — that 
"revolutionary measure" has already foisted itself into 
the Constitution under cover of justice to the negro, and 
protection against rebellion; and all the wisdom and 
patriotism of the nation are now required to save the Con- 
stitution, the government, society itself, from being shat- 
tered by this explosive element in the organic law. " I 
expect," says Prof. Sumner, " that this experience will be 
very painful ; and I expect it very soon." Has, then, the 
science of politics no higher lesson than the old laissez- 
faire habit, the drifting, do-nothing policy, that waits for 
some painful experience to rouse us to exertion, and then 
runs on as listlessly as before? Shall we bring an evil 

i North- American Review, January, 1876, p. 86. 



272 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

upon ourselves, and then wait for experience to teach us 
how evil and bitter it is ? Prof. Sumner's plank of select- 
ing " competent men to deal with questions " is good 
timber to build the bridge after we shall have braced the 
piers against the furious flood we have let in upon them 
by the breach we have made in the dam. Either that 
huge gap of universal suffrage must be stopped, or a 
choice of compulsory education be built to regulate the 
flow. How are "competent men" to be selected, unless 
the voters shall know enough to realize the importance of 
questions to be dealt with, and the competence of candi- 
dates to deal with them ? We must look first to the foun- 
dation ; must raise the voter, either by raising the standard 
of suffrage, or by creating better material through the 
compulsory training of the schools. 

What we really need is character ; but the attempt to 
set up a moral test for voters, such as honesty or truth, 
would only lead to hypocrisy in the Church, and to Phari- 
saism in the State. We are no longer in the Massachu- 
setts Colony of 1639, where, on the day of the public fast, 
a member of the Boston church was openly admonished by 
the pastor, in the name of the church, " for selling his wares 
at excessive rates, to the dishonor of God's name, the offence 
of the General Court, and the public scandal of the coun- 
try." l Could such discipline be made international, it 
would cause a squirming, not only among American trades- 
men, but among foreign tradesmen that Americans do wot 
of. But, though the State cannot set up a test of morality, 
it can fix a standard of knowledge. We cannot know 
how to read a man's heart ; but we can know if he can 
read a book. And, though knowledge does not guarantee 
all the virtues, crime is so generally associated with igno- 
rance, that we may look hopefully to knowledge as a cor- 
rective : hence, for its own preservation, society is bound 
to insist that every voter shall be in condition for the free 
and intelligent exercise of his suffrage. We need no 
further experience to teach us that : we cannot hope for 
" competent men " as rulers till we practise that. 

Some such system as Mr. Hare has recommended for 
securing the rights of minorities would tend to purify the 

i Flint's Eccles. History of New England, i. 3S8. 



PERILS, DUTIES, ETC., OF THE OPENING CENTURY. 273 

polls, and would relieve elections of the most dangerous 
elements of party-strife. 1 

But some one will say, "It is all very well for you, who 
would be likely to retain a place among voters under any 
system of classification, to propose a restriction of suffrage ; 
but why should you deny this right of manhood to those 
who have been less favored in education and position than 
yourself? " I respect this appeal, and, since it is personal, 
beg permission to answer it with a fact of personal experi- 
ence ; which is, that, for years after I had attained to ma- 
jority, I lived in New Haven under a legal disqualification 
for voting, but never felt this to be a restriction upon my 
manhood, nor an injustice to me as a citizen. As a public 
teacher of morals and religion, I had a recognized position 
in the community : but education and position did not 
avail one whit toward making me a voter ; and I saw the 
ignorant and the vicious going to the polls to perform a 
function for which I had not the required fitness. The 
reason was, that the law of Connecticut at that time re- 
quired, that, in order to vote, one must be the owner of 
real estate to a small amount. My salary left me no sur- 
plus to invest in such a dignity ; and I could not demean 
myself to do what others about me were doing, — accept a 
deed of land the day before election, giving a quit-deed to 
return it the day after. Had the law continued, I should 
have " died without the sight " of that promised land. 
Yet I never felt this to be a personal grievance, nor the 
privation of a right. I must here insist once more, that 
voting is not a prerogative of anybody's manhood or 
womanhood ; that no human being is born with a natural 
and inalienable right to go to the polls to vote, or be voted 
for. My judgment approved of some conditions of suffrage 
for the security of liberty and order, and for good govern- 
ment : the property qualification might not be the most 
judicious ; but any qualification must be unequal and im- 
perfect in its application. If the law of New York should 
limit the decision of measures affecting property to the 
owners of real estate, I should not feel myself touched in 
any right of manhood or of citizenship ; for what right or 
what qualification have I for levying upon the property of 

1 The Election of Representatives, by Thomas Hare. 



274 CEXTEXXIAL OF AMERICAX IXDEPEXDEXCE. 

an Astor, a Stewart, a Vanderbilt ? In what respect would 
my manhood be abridged if I should be required to keep 
to my library, and leave such men to the care of their 
ledgers ? The merchants, manufacturers, and mechanics 
of New Haven, who had chosen me to be their teacher, did 
not rate their manhood above mine because they coidd 
vote, and I could not. Moreover, my studies in "history 
and political philosophy had already taught me, that even 
political power does not reside in place, or in the polls, 
but in personality ; that time advances in the direction of 
ideas, and that one good idea may have more weight than 
a thousand votes. A droll illustration of this occurred at 
that period. One clay, during the fierce presidential con- 
test between Mr. Clay and Mr. Polk, I chanced to be re- 
turning to New Haven from New York by steamboat, and, 
to while away time, entered into a friendly discussion of 
the tariff. A group gathered round ; and for some three 
hours I maintained the cause of free trade against a 
dozen protectionists. It was but a free-and-easy steam- 
boat talk ; yet hardly had I reached home before the town 
was on fire with the report that I had been making a 
speech on board the boat that might damage Mr. Clay's 
prospects in the election. Some influential Whigs of my 
congregation absented themselves from the next public 
service, and sundry citizens favored me with remonstrances 
and admonitions. What a laughable commentary it was 
upon the power of the ballot, that a beardless youth, who 
had never cast a vote, could put a lot of politicians into a 
scare by venting a few ideas ! And what donkeys " we the 
people of the United States " do make of ourselves by our 
adulation of the ballot-box as the symbol of power ! He 
who holds converse with ideas, who grasps a principle, 
who states a truth so clearly that they that run may read 
it, lays hold upon the inner sources of power. He need 
not concern himself about parties or majorities. Events 
follow ideas, and time will take care of truth. Such a 
one may never have office, never be popular, but at last 
may approve his manhood as the friendly counsellor of 
statesmen, the unofficial leader of parliaments and peoples. 
Bluntschli has well pointed the distinction between 
political equality and eligibility to office. " It is an ad- 



PERILS, DUTIES, ETC., OF THE OPENING CENTUEY. 275 

vance in true equality, that the modern State opens to all, 
in like manner, the way to public office, and no longer 
reserves this to privileged classes. But it is a false 
equality to appoint by lot the officials, — for whom a 
thorough preparatory training is an indispensable neces- 
sity to good official service, — instead of making the 
bestowal of office dependent upon examination, capacity, 
and the selection of the* fittest." l This wise discrimina- 
tion he enforces by the vital distinction between the 
people as a nation, a unified moral person incorporated 
in a constitution, and a mere conglomerate of all the 
inhabitants within the boundaries of the State. Offices 
should exist to serve the body politic, and not to give 
places to persons or parties as members of the political 
community. This holds also of voting. Dr. Franklin 
threw ridicule upon a property qualification for voting 
by his story of the man admitted to vote as the owner of 
an ass. The ass dying, the man could not vote in the 
following year. Query, Did the man vote, or the ass? 
But " manhood suffrage " really brings asses to the polls 
in droves. A wiser condition of suffrage is education, 
since education once acquired becomes an inalienable 
possession of the man himself. 

A system of compulsory education would tend to settle 
two other questions that now threaten the peace of the 
country, — that of religion in the schools, and that of race 
distinctions. Compulsory education should be limited to 
the plainer elements of knowledge, in reading, writing, 
arithmetic, geography, history, &c. : these every child 
under the age of twelve should be obliged to master, 
whether in the public school, a private school, or by tui- 
tion at home, — in the last two cases, the fact to be duly 
certified. This education the State must insist upon as 
obligatory upon all its citizens, without exception ; and 
for this it is bound to make provision in schools of its 
own. 2 The State may add to these, at its discretion, 

1 Lehre von Modernen Staat, iii. 55. 

2 For a few years past, a law of compulsory education has been in force 
in the State of New York. This law provides "that every child between the 
ages of eight and fourteen years shall attend school for fourteen weeks in 
every year, of which eight weeks must be consecutive; or shall receive 
equivalent instruction at home. No child can be employed in any labor 



276 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

schools of a higher grade ; but the law of compulsion 
should end with the elementary training, and leave 
entirely to parental or other private methods instruction 
in religion and in foreign tongues. 

This last point brings us face to face with the latest 
aspect of the race-question in the United States. Singu- 
larly enough, the most formidable phase of the race-ques- 
tion is not the political status of the negroes and the 
Chinese, as European observers imagine, but the moral 
and political attitude of a portion of the German immi- 
gration. The Irish can be dangerous only through igno- 
rance, which makes them tools of politicians, or through 
a religious training that makes them tools of priest- 
craft ; and even the small measure of compulsory educa- 
tion that I have insisted on would help to emancipate 
them from both. They mingle kindly with the native 
stock ; and though still clannish, and fond of a row, they 
are loyal to the country that has endowed them with 
manhood, liberty, and comfort. 

From the negro and the Chinese society has little to 
fear, so long as they are let alone, provided always that 
education up to a certain standard be made a condition of 
suffrage. The negroes are a docile race, prone to indo- 
lence, good-natured, easily contented, and, though addicted 
to petty vices, not likely to array themselves in open hos- 
tility to the laws or to their neighbors. Their behavior 

or business so as to conflict with tins requirement, under a penalty of fifty 
dollars on the employer. 

The trustee of every school-district, or the corresponding official, is to- 
make a semi-annual visitation of all manufacturing establishments where 
children are employed, to see that the law is obeyed. Penalties are affixed 
for violation <-f the law by parents or guardians. School-books arc to be 
provided at the public expense in case of necessity. In case of obstinate 
refusal of a child to attend school, he is to be regarded as a truant: and the 
trustees or school-board of each town are to make arrangements for the 
confinement and discipline of truants as may be necessary.' The following 
cogent arguments secured the passage of this law. The report of the com- 
mittee demonstrated from an analysis of the last census, first, that, on the 
average, in this country illiterate persons furnish ten times tin; number of 
paupers that they would if given such an education as our free schools 
offer gratis; second!;/, that, in the State of New York, we have one hun- 
dred and eighty-nine thousand adults who cannot read and write, of whom 
seventy-three thousand are males, and hence are or may be voters; thirdly, 
that this State expends twelve millions of dollars a year upon free schools, 
thus providing a good elementary education for every one of the million 
and a half of school-children in the State free of cost; fourth l;j, that one- 
third of the children of the school-age are on the average each year kept 
out of school altogether. 



PERILS, DUTIES, ETC., OF THE OPEXIXG CENTURY. 277 

during the war, their patience, and faith in the hope of 
emancipation, and their self-restraint amid temptations to 
plunder and massacre, should satisfy their former masters 
that they have nothing to fear from the negroes, if they 
will but let them alone in the enjoyment of their liberties 
and rights; or rather if outside politicians and party 
tricksters will leave both whites and blacks at the South 
alone to adjust themselves to their new relations with 
time and experience. Of themselves, the negroes would 
hardly organize a race party ; and, though led into this 
error by bad advice and bad example, their native saga- 
city is teaching them to break the line of color in politics, 
in order that the best of the blacks may join the best of 
the whites in saving society from the worst of both races. 
Time is here the best reconciler. 

How far the present apparent conflict of races in the 
South is due to the mistaken policy upon which the war 
was conducted, and peace concluded, I have shown in a 
preceding Lecture. The Kebellion was not a revolt of the 
Southern people : it was an organic attempt on the part 
of States to break up the Union by secession. The State 
organizations were put in motion to destroy the govern- 
ment to which they owed their existence : hence they for- 
feited all recognition as States. They were not States 
outside of the Union ; neither were they States within the 
Union as integral members to be conquered back to their 
allegiance : the States as political entities had lapsed by 
their own suicidal act; and there remained only a territory 
under the Union, and a population to be made obedient to 
its laws. Slavery, being the mere creature of State law, 
perished in the self-annihilation of the State. 1 It was then 
open to the government of the United States to erect the 
pacified Southern Territories into States as one by one they 
should renounce the dogma of secession, establish a repub- 
lican form of government, make all men equal before the 
law, and open suffrage to all upon the same conditions. 
By the salutary working of human nature seeking its own 
interests, some States would have been constituted and 

1 See my address of June 20, 1861, in the Independent of July 11; also 
my discourse on Abraham Lincoln, April 30, 18(J5 (Loyal Publication So- 
ciety). 



278 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

admitted to the Union sooner than others, thus forestall- 
ing the danger of " a solid South." And just as political 
parties in the North have bidden for the Irish vote, the 
German vote, the working-man's vote, so parties in the 
South would have courted the negro vote, thus merging 
the "conflict of races" in their own conflict of political 
interests. But the erroneous theory of dealing with 
seceded States having been adopted at the outbreak of 
the Rebellion, common sense and human nature were lost 
sight of in the rigmarole of " reconstruction." For one, I 
am not in the least disappointed in the consequences of 
making the negro a specialty of politics and philanthropy, 
instead of treating him simply as a man, to be aided and 
protected just as other men, neither more nor less. Hav- 
ing fought for twenty years for the emancipation of the 
slave, — when to care for the negro was to risk what most 
men prize in life, — the moment the slave was made a free- 
man before the law, I felt bound in his interest as a man, 
no less than in the interest of society and the State, to 
protest against coddling the freedman as " the ward of the 
nation." Directly after the Avar, a worthy black man ap- 
plied to me for aid in starting a special theological school 
for black men in Ohio. I declined. With much surprise 
he said, " I was sent to you, sir, as a strong friend of my 
race." — " Exactly so ; and it is as a friend of your race 
that I decline to aid a project, which, now that you are 
free, would stamp you as a separate caste. In times of 
obloquy I did what I could to aid Oberlin College, because 
there the black man was treated as the equal of the white 
in all opportunities for study and improvement ; and now 
you ask me to turn my back on Oberlin, which has fought 
your battle, and help you start a rival caste college near 
by in Ohio. I shall do no such thing. In any commu- 
nity where as yet you have no opportunity for equal edu- 
cation, I will help your schools and churches on the 
ground that they are needed and are poor, but not on the 
plea that they are black. If your race would rise, you 
must at once begin to. act as men, and not expect to be 
either pitied or petted as negroes." My applicant was 
sorely puzzled at the discovery, that though it were worth 
the blood and treasure of the nation to redeem the slave 



PERILS, DUTIES, ETC., OF THE OPENING CENTURY. 279 

because lie was a man, yet, on becoming a freeman, he was 
only a man, and must not look for exceptional favors " on 
account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." 
Some time after, I was much gratified at seeing this whole- 
some and needed truth put forth with his accustomed man- 
liness and vigor by that noble and eloquent champion of 
freedom and equality, Mr. Frederick Douglass. In a 
Fourth-of-July address at Hillsdale, Mr. Douglass said to 
and for his race, — 

" All we ask is a fair field to work in, and the white man to leave 
us alone. We have been injured more than we have been helped by 
men who have professed to be our friends. Fellow-citizens, we must 
stop these men from begging for us. They misrepresent us, and 
cause the country to look upon us as a poor and helpless people. 
They say, ' Please give something to help to educate the poor black 
people; but do, I pray, pay it to me:' and, if it is a hundred dollars, 
it is reduced to about a hundred cents when it gets to the < poor black 
people.' We do not want, we will not have, these second-rate men 
begging for us. We protest against it." 

Smarting under the experience of the Freedman's 
Savings Bank, as one of the guardians of " the wards of 
the nation," Mr. Douglass said, " We propose to cut loose 
from all invidious class institutions, and to part company 
with all those wandering mendicants who have followed 
us simply for paltry gain. We now bid an affectionate 
farewell to all these plunderers; and in the future, if 
we need a Moses, we will find him in our own tribes." 

These are brave words, and sensible as plucky. The 
whole negro problem in the South would be solved by the 
formula, " A fair field to work in, and the white man to 
leave us alone." We cannot recover in a day the ground 
lost by the mistaken theory of the war and of reconstruc- 
tion; but the case is by no means hopeless, nor so for- 
midable as some imagine. In a paper on " The Question 
of Races in the United States," read before the Associa- 
tion for the Promotion of Social Science at its session in 
Glasgow, October, 1874, I ventured to say, " If the politi- 
cal element of the problem could be withdrawn, the 
so-called conflict of races would be greatly modified, if, 
indeed, it would not wholly cease. The present commo- 
tion in the South, though marked by the formation of the 
4 white man's league,' is to be ascribed more to political 



280 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

misrule than to prejudice of race." Since then, the expe- 
riences of the presidential election have fully confirmed 
this opinion. No former slaveholder had any objection to 
the negro's voting on the ground that he was a negro. 
The negro who presented himself at the polls for the 
avowed purpose of voting the Democratic ticket encoun- 
tered no prejudice of race, and needed no United-States 
troops to protect him in the exercise of his suffrage. Had 
the Southern States been re-organized upon the basis of 
impartial suffrage, — that is, suffrage upon local conditions 
fairly within the reach of all, instead of indiscriminate 
universal suffrage enforced from without, — the native 
whites of the South would have been divided into rival 
parties, each bidding for the negro vote, and each caring 
that the negro should have a vote. But the just-emanci- 
pated slaves, in all their ignorance and incompetence, 
were thrown upon the South en masse as voters and 
rulers. To the whites of the South, defeated in war, 
impoverished, and in some cases disfranchised, these 
black voters and rulers represented the power that had 
conquered them, and the party that sought again to con- 
quer them in the field of politics. Here was a chronic 
cause of distrust and disturbance ; and can any wonder at 
what has followed? Careful and candid observers, such 
as Mr. Charles Nordhoff and Mr. Watson (of " The Lon- 
don Times "), testify, that, wherever society is left to its 
normal conditions, industry and comfort are advancing in 
the South; and that whites and blacks live amicably 
together, unless disturbed by attempts from without 
to direct the political action of the negroes as a class. 
Through all the excitements of the late presidential elec- 
tion, the South attested its loyalty to the Union, and its 
aversion to another civil war. There can be little doubt, 
that, if the South is left to itself, the " conflict of races " 
will gradually die out; that justice and confidence will 
gain with time. If, unhappily, there should arise a con- 
flict of arms between the whites and blacks in any State, 
is there any resource under our political system but 
either to localize the conflict, and leave the parties to fight 
it out, or, on the ground of anarchy, to declare the State 
dissolved, and govern it as a Territory by the military 



PERILS, DUTIES, ETC., OE THE OPENING CENTURY. 281 

power of the nation ? But such, an alternative is not 
likely to be presented, and is sure to be averted by two 
simple rules : 1 — 

1. Let the General Government refrain from all further 
legislation or interference on behalf of the negro as such. 
If riots arise that the State authorities cannot quell, the 
National Government, duly invoked, should interfere, to 
preserve the public peace ; and also, if necessary, it should 
use the arm of power to sustain the courts in putting 
down injustice, outrage, and wrong, by the arm of the 
law. But all this without making a point of caring for 
the negro in distinction from any other man ; for the best 
way of caring for the negro is to cease to know him as a 
negro, and to treat him always and only as a man. Above 
all should the government refrain from legislating upon 
social customs, instincts, or prejudices. A legal injustice 
can be done away by law ; a moral wrong, in the form of 
overt action, can be dealt with by law : but a taste, a sen- 
timent, a feeling, an instinct, a prejudice, — these pass the 
bounds of all legislation; and the attempt to rectify or 
regulate these by law serves only to irritate opposition. 
At these points human nature has much in common with 
the porcupine. 

2. The black race should be taught that they are to 
depend upon themselves. Having freedom, schools, the 
rights of citizens guaranteed by the law, and the induce- 
ment to self-culture presented by opportunities of political 
action, they should be made to feel that their future is in 
their own hands ; that, if they would rise to a position 
of respect and of responsibility as men, they must show 
themselves to be men. There is no other way for any 
race. If they cannot do this, they must go under. If 
they will not do this, they ought to go under. But no 
one who knows the negro race in America can doubt, that 
with time upon their side, and patience and justice toward 
them on the part of others, they will rise to the full meas- 
ure of their opportunities, and, with their capacity for 
work, their docility, their kindliness, their adaptivity, 
their mirthfulness, their religious faith, will form as good 
a part as any in the social sytsem of the future. Time, 

1 See paper, read at Glasgow, on the Question of Races. 



282 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

patience, justice, will cause the friction of races to disap- 
pear in the working of the American system of harmon- 
ized humanity. 

The Chinese, as yet, show little inclination to become 
naturalized as American citizens. Industrious, thrifty, 
clannish, they use America as a mine of gold to be worked 
for accumulations to be spent in that Celestial Empire 
where gold still passes current. If let alone, they are not 
likely to make war upon a society that opens to them so 
many avenues to industry and wealth. If they brino- 
with them vices, the vicious must be dealt with as law- 
breakers, not as Chinese. If they would practise immo- 
ralities in the name of religion, I will show presently how 
we should deal with these. But, as a race, they seem to 
exhibit no elements of danger that will not be overcome 
by education and usage. 

So far as there is any race difficulty with the negroes 
and the Chinese, it does not originate with them, nor lie 
in their race qualities, but is created usually by the 
whites ; and, leaving prejudice out of view, it has more to 
do with labor and politics than with color or nationality. 
For prejudice there is no remedy, save in the growth of 
Christian magnanimity over unreasoning instinct. The 
Jew is no longer locked up at night in his quarter in the 
Christian capitals of Europe, nor burnt for his gold ; but 
who will quite trust the Turk to keep faith with his Chris- 
tian subjects ? What means the constant appendage to 
London advertisements for servants, — " No Irish need 
apply " ? Such antipathies come and go with change of 
times ; and there is no remedy for them in laws or in phi- 
losophy. But race antipathies are appealed to in America 
to create political capital among the working-classes. 
Working-men hate competition in wages and skill, 
whether this arises from their own associates or from in- 
truding foreigners. Trades-unions attempt to monopolize 
labor, and to deter any from working except upon their 
terms. Each class treads clown that next beneath it. 
Hence, when Chinamen began to crowd into the labor- 
market of California, and, by living cheaply and working 
skilfully, to crowd upon the Germans and Irish already 
there, these resented this competition of labor by antipa- 



PEEILS, DUTIES, ETC., OF THE OPEXDTG CENTUEY. 283 

thies of race ; and the stamp politician was at hand to 
catch "the working-man's vote " by promising to prohibit 
Chinese immigration. He had been ready enough to have 
a small game with Ah Sin, and to pluck him with a " right 
bower;" but, finding that "bland and childlike" party 
could coyer him with his sleeve, he at once rose to ex- 
plain : — 

" Then I looked up at Nye, 
And he gazed upon me; 
And he rose with a sigh, 

And said, ' Can this be? 
We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor : ' 
And he went for that heathen Chinee." 

Bret Harte's ridicule caused a sudden collapse in the 
anti-Chinese fanaticism of the hour. This, however, has 
since been revived with greater malignity and in more for- 
midable proportions. The motive is given in the fact that 
more than fifty per cent of the voters in California are 
of foreign birth, chiefly Irish and German laborers ; and 
thus the lower classes of European society come into com- 
petition with the lower classes of Asiatic society for the 
means of subsistence. If the Chinese were voters, some 
political party would begin to use them as an offset to the 
Irish and Germans, who now intimidate politicians into 
the policy of proscription. Yet what friend of free insti- 
tutions would recommend the admission of these raw 
pagans to the polls ? Cheap labor is not the sole condi- 
tion of even material prosperity. The sense of justice 
will finally prevail ; and, in all cases where the prejudice 
of race is used for a political game with labor, it needs 
only that law and public sentiment should protect every 
man in his right to earn his living ; and the laws of trade 
will soon settle the status of competing races. 

Quite different, however, and far more serious, are the 
difficulties created by a portion of the German immigra- 
tion in the United States. These bad representatives of 
a good race would use their very training in knowledge, 
and their newly-acquired experience of freedom, to per- 
vert the nationality of the American people, and overturn 
the foundations of morality and order on which their free- 
dom rests. For the first, they demand, as a right of their 



284 CEXTENXIAL OF AMERICAN IXDEPEXDEXCE. 

nationality and their numbers, that the German language 
be taught in the public schools, and provision made for 
teaching their own children all knowledge through the 
medium of the German tongue. If the demand were on 
the part of American parents that their children should 
be taught German as an accomplishment to the same ex- 
tent that English and French are taught in public schools 
in Germany, this would be merely a question of expedi- 
ency as to the form and extent of common-school training. 
But this is a demand of naturalized foreigners that the 
State shall assist them in bringing up their children as 
Germans, with all the fond associations of nationality that 
cluster about one's mother-tongue, with the feeling that 
Germany is their real fatherland, and America only their 
business factory ; in a word, that the State shall make pro- 
vision for perpetuating a distinct German nationality with- 
in the American Pepublic. The demand is presumptuous, 
disloyal, suicidal, such as no State could admit for a mo- 
ment. Presumptuous ; for what is Germany now doing, 
what must she do, in the provinces of Posen and Elsass, 
if she would there have lo}-al subjects in the next genera- 
tion? She is compelling every child to learn German, 
and every official to speak and write German. In Stras- 
burg she has even painted out the liquid French names of 
the streets, and substituted her own jaw-breaking guttu- 
rals. This is sound policy. If jou would build up a na- 
tion loyal and true, you must begin at the foundation, and 
" out of the mouth of babes and sucklings must ordain 
strength, because of its enemies, and to still the enemy 
and the avenger." While the German nation is thus com- 
pelling all its members to be of one speech, is it not a 
pretty impertinence for Germans in the United States to 
demand that theirs shall be the lanoriao'e of the schools ? 
As a specimen of this impertinence, take the following 
resolve of a meeting of Germans at Cooper Institute, Xew 
York : — 

" Whereas the German language is the natural idiom of a large 
portion of the population of the United States of America and of 
this metropolis, thus offering such additional practical advantages as 
would best recommend that language for adoption as a regular 
branch of instruction in our public schools, — ■ 



PEEILS, DUTIES, ETC., OF THE OPENING CENTUEY. 285 

" Resolved, That we, as citizens and tax-payers, most solemnly pro- 
test against any measures looking to the exclusion or curtailment of 
instruction in German in such of our schools where this study has 
already been established as a regular branch of instruction." 

Could there "be a greater peril to national unity and 
liberty than this scheme of fostering and perpetuating 
within the State a brood of children alien in tongue, in 
name, and in moral allegiance ? This is disloyal also. In 
being naturalized, the foreigner swears " to renounce and 
abjure all allegiance and fidelity to every foreign prince, 
potentate, state, and sovereignty whatever," and particu- 
larly to that of which he was born a subject. He should 
therefore in good faitli identify himself with the interests 
of his adopted country as his own. As a man of honor, 
he cannot take this oath with mental reservations, nor hold 
a divided allegiance. In the event of war with Germany, 
non-naturalized Germans residing in the United States 
should be protected in person and property while remain- 
ing neutral ; but the naturalized German must fight for 
America, or quit. No other rule is admissible. Now, the 
children of the naturalized citizen are native-born Ameri- 
cans ; and it is the duty of the father to train them up 
in allegiance to American institutions. This used to be 
done when Germany was a country to run away from, and 
America a country for a refuge and a home ; but, now that 
Germany is a very good country to come back to with the 
spoils of American trade, there is a class of naturalized 
Germans who would bring up their children with Ger- 
many in view as their home, using their American citi- 
zenship only as a protection against military service, — a 
speculation in disloyalty that both nations should frown 
upon. 

Further: the policy of using the public schools for 
training the children of foreigners to perpetuate a foreign 
speech as a symbol and bond of foreign nationality would 
be suicidal. If done for the Germans, this must be done 
by and by for the Chinese ; for the Mexicans who may join 
us ; for the Icelanders, if they shall emigrate to their newly- 
found paradise of Alaska : in short, Americans must cease 
to be an harmonious, unified people, and degenerate into 



286 CEXTENKIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

such a rabble of quarrelling tongues and nationalities as 
one finds in Turkey. 1 

Not content with thus attempting to pervert our nation- 
ality, there are radical and fanatical Germans who seek 
to overturn the very foundations upon which our freedom 
rests. They make war upon the Sunday observances, the 
religious faith,- the moral usages, of the people, and aim at 
a libertinism' of thought and action, in these particulars, 
worthy of the days of the French Revolution. The hon- 
ored professors and pastors who went over from Germany 
to the Evangelical Alliance in New York brought back 
with one accord the lament, that, while the entire Ameri- 
can press of the city reported the conference with favor 
or respect, there were German newspapers that sneered at 
the body, and blasphemed its work ; and that a class of 
Germans was foremost in demoralizing the nation by out- 
raging its religious sentiment and observances. This was 
the testimony of German witnesses. 2 

On this point I must speak plainly, perhaps strongly ; 
but I am sure I shall be sustained by high-minded, sober- 
minded Germans both in Germany and in America. You 
ma}- not like some of our customs : we do not like ' some 
of yours. You think you could improve our civilization : 
we return the compliment most heartily, and should be 
glad to improve 3-ours. But you do not wish an American- 
ized Germany ; neither do we wish a Germanized America. 
When we point you, for instance, to our free church and 
free powers, you answer, " This may do very well for you ; 
but we are a very different people, and our development 
must proceed from our historical back-ground." Very 

1 The Board of Education in Detroit has put this point very forcibly : — 
" As a nation, we should not. for our own preservation, teach any language hut the 

English. To do otherwise would he to establish and encourage communities, which 
would he no more nor less than colonial dependencies of foreign countries ; which 
every sagacious man must see would be detrimental to our best national interests. If 
we do it for one nationality because of the numbers, wealth, or influence, then we must 
do the same for others, no difference what their origin may be. If the Chinese or 
Japanese should come over to this country in vast numbers (a thing not improbable), 
theu it may be just as important for us to teach or use their respective languages. It 
will at once be conceded that such a policy would be national suicide." 

2 See Deutsches Leben in Nord-Amerika, von H. Krummacher; and the 
speech of Prof. Dr. Dorner before the Evangelical Alliance of Berlin. The 
National Zeitung of Berlin boasted that the German press in the United 
States had made an energetic protest against closing the Centennial Exhi- 
bition on Sundays. 



PERILS, DUTIES, ETC.. OF THE OPENING CENTURY. 287 

true : and we, also, are a different people ; and our devel- 
opment must cling to its historical root, which is morality 
and religion. Severed from that, we perish. 

Now, there is a higher issue at stake than the inner de- 
velopment of Germany and of the United States ; namely, 
that for which both nations are worth developing, the in- 
fluence upon the future of mankind of two great free peo- 
ples conserving under different forms the essentials, with- 
out which no human society can endure, — religion, law, 
liberty, order, culture. And, for this influence on our 
part, it is necessary, that, in respect of religious practices 
and moral customs, America should not be Germanized. 
No people can be governed without the sense of a supreme 
authority vested somewhere. Where the government 
rests in the collective will of the people, the sense of 
authority is secured in the subjection of the individual 
will to conscience, to the feeling of moral obligation; in 
one word, to duty and to God. The Bible, the Church, 
the Sunday, and the social usages that have grown out of 
these, have nurtured in the American people that public 
conscience that gives sanctity to law, and, in the end, 
gives victory to right. Take away that conscience, demol- 
ish the institutions that nourish it, break down the barriers 
that protect it, and you leave government and society to 
the license of individual, irresponsible wills. That is 
anarchy ; and the road out of anarchy is military despot- 
ism. Hence the Germans in America who are seeking to 
free society from all restraints of law, custom, religion, are 
preparing to subject it to the severest of all restraints, — 
that of a despot usurping the name of order. I appeal to 
the sober sense of Germans, I appeal to the instinct of 
self-preservation in Americans, against the fanaticism that 
would destroy the tried and proved foundations of our 
national freedom, and put in their ste^cl the crude theo- 
ries of the European democracy of 1848. I repeat it, the 
strength of a republic lies in character; but there is no 
character without morality, and, for the average man, no 
morality without responsibility to a higher Power. 

Let me not be misunderstood. The doctrines and pur- 
poses imputed to the Native-American party I utterly 
detest. Never would I consent to make race or religion a 



288 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

barrier to the privileges and honors of citizenship in the 
American Union. What I am here insisting upon has not 
the remotest affinity with the demands of Nativism. 
Every man has the right to expatriate himself. The for- 
eigner who prefers to retain his nationality, and his alle- 
giance to his native land, is entitled to the protection of 
the laws of the country in which he lives, or of treaty 
stipulations between that country and his own, so long as 
he does nothing contrary to the laws ; but if he volunta- 
rily renounces his allegiance to his own country, and makes 
himself a citizen of another, then he is bound to identify 
himself fully with the country of his adoption, and give 
to this his sole and unreserved allegiance. To use his 
vote, his office, the political opportunities of his new citi- 
zenship, to further the interests of the nationality he had 
sworn to renounce, would be an act both of perjury and 
of treachery. The man who could be guilty of this is 
not deserving of citizenship in any country. The point I 
here insist upon is as really for the interest of Germany 
as of the United States, and is indispensable to the honor 
and respectability of Germans in the United States : it is 
simply that the German is perfectly free to live in the 
United States as a German, keeping his heart and hopes 
in his fatherland, and refusing to be Americanized. But 
if he chooses to become an American citizen, then, in 
every thing that concerns the State, he must cease to 
think, feel, act, as a German, and be simply and wholly 
American. 

In the course of these Lectures I have felt bound to 
allude impartially to some of the less pleasing incidents 
of German character and life ; but the whole tone of the 
Lectures testifies to my high regard for the German people, 
which, indeed, circumstances have made a matter of pub- 
lic record in Germany, England, and the United States. 
Intelligent and candid Germans will see that I am none 
the less zealous for the good name of Germany in this 
view of citizenship. Let Germans come to America by 
the thousands ; _ let them stay as Germans if they will, 
keeping their language and customs, but subject to the 
laws : but, if they would be naturalized, they must be 
American, and nothing else, never planning or acting as 



PERILS, DUTIES, ETC., OF THE OPENING CENTUPvY. 289 

Germans in public affairs, nor seeking to pervert the 
nation from its good old ways. 1 

As to those who would use their American citizenship 
to cover a fraud upon both countries, I would say to them, 
as a shopkeeper in Berlin said to an Englishman who used 
his shop as a lounging-place, without buying, " I say, 
next time you comes inside, petter you stays outside," — 
"Next time you emigrates, petter you stays at home !" 

Here opens before us the wider question of the possi- 
bility of a religious conflict in the United States, — a con- 
flict springing, from one side, out of the attempt to practise 
immoralities in the name of religion, and, from the other, 
the attempt, in the name of conscience, to subjugate civil 
government to ecclesiastical control. In dealing with the 
social and political questions raised by Mormonism, Free- 
Lovism, and Ultramontanism, we must take our stand upon 
the absolute freedom of religion and the absolute inviola- 
bility of conscience. These principles we ourselves would 
never part with ; but they are not worth holding for our- 
selves, unless we are equally ready to maintain them for 
all others. Religious freedom for ourselves, as against 
others, is not a principle, but a pretence and a presump- 
tion. Freedom of conscience for ourselves, as against 
others, is not virtue nor faith, but bigotry and proscrip- 
tion. Never, under whatever provocation of danger or 
fear, never let the United States swerve one iota from the 
broad principle they were the first among nations to main- 
tain, — that " all men are equally entitled to the free exer- 
cise of religion." 2 

1 I have a great regard for Mr. Carl Scliurz. Now, it was made a point 
in the late presidential election, that Mr. Schurz could influence the Ger- 
man vote; that the German vote would be so and so. But what have we 
to do with a German vote ? Is the naturalized citizen a German, or an 
American ? If he purposes to vote as a German, he should not he suffered 
to vote at all. The United-States consul at Frankfort very properly 
refused to receive from Germans an address reflecting upon their own 
government. Hereupon the Germans in the United States went into a 
paroxysm of indignation. But what business was this of theirs ? What 
have German voters in the United States to do with politics in Germany V 

2 The separation of Church and State, and the absolute freedom of reli- 
gion, distinguish the United States from even the most advanced nations 
of Europe. In England, the spirit of toleration gives a large degree of reli- 
gious freedom; but the State church remains to overshadow the dissenting 
sects. In Prussia, the equality of confessions (that is, of the Catholic and 
Protestant communions) has been long maintained; and, of late, a larger 
liberty of dissent from the privileged churches has been allowed bylaw. 



290 CENTENNIAL OF AMEBICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

But we cannot allow religion to be a cover for vice, 
conscience a pretext for conspiracy. Religion and con- 
science as ruling within the soul of man are one thing: 
religion and conscience as acting in society are quite 
another thing. Many questions and actions that are 
assumed to lie within the domain of religion and con- 
science lie equally within the domain of civil society; 
and society has a right to decide these for itself, in view 
of its own security, peace, and welfare, without asking 
counsel of men's faith, or taking note of their consciences. 
Nay, in such matters, society is bound to have a conscience 
of its own ; and that moral person called the State must 
ascertain and obey the law of right, even against the so- 
called dicta of religion. 

The Mormon makes polygamy a part of his religion: 
the Christian State makes polygamy a crime. Is it, then, 
a violation of religious freedom, or of the rights of con- 
science, if the State sends a Mormon to the penitentiary 
for bigamy ? By what right does the State interfere in a 
social relation which is set up in the name of an express 
revelation from God? The answer is plain. 

The famii}^, in some form, is the necessary unit of civil 
society. A community organized of individuals as sepa- 
rate units would be an army, not a civil society, nor prop- 
erly a State. By the law of nature, no new individual 
can be produced as a member of society save through 
wedlock, — at least in its lowest form of pairing or coition ; 
and, since civil society has a vital interest in the produc- 
tion of its future constituents, it has a right to concern 

But, in the United States, religion stands on the basis of absolute freedom. 
One of the earliest champions of religious liberty was Roger Williams. Dr. 
J. Hammond Trumbull of Hartford has lately discovered a tract of Wil- 
liams's, published in London in 1G52, in which he contends for "soul-free- 
dom as of mighty con equence to this nation." 

The four proposals in support of which it was written are, in substance, 
for liberty of preaching without license from magistrates, for leaving to 
God the punishment of false teachers and heretics, for the denial of juris- 
diction in spirituals to the civil power, and for permission to the Jews to 
live freely and peaceably in England. The argument is clearly and forci- 
bly presented, and in literary merit the tract is unsurpassed by any work 
of" its author. There was no subject on which Roger Williams so well 
loved to speak, or could so well, as on "soul-freedom." "Oh that it 
would please the Father of spirits," he says, "to affect the heart of the 
Parliament with such a merciful sense of the soul-bars and yokes which 
our fathers have laid upon the neck of this nation, and at last to proclaim 
a true and absolute soul-freedom to all the people of the land impartially! " 



PERILS, DUTIES, ETC., OF THE OPENING CENTURY. 291 

itself with the modes, conditions, and antecedents of that 
production, — in other words, with the family, which is at 
once the germ and the unitary form of its own life. This 
necessary supervision of the constituents of its own con- 
tinuous being, modern society secures by demanding in 
the parental relation certainty and publicity, in order that 
responsibility may be fixed for the production of offspring, 
and for their training and support. At this primal source 
of its own life, the parental function, society must defend 
itself against such license, abuse, or irresponsibility, as 
might entail disorder, corruption, and even disorganiza- 
tion, upon the civil community or state. This obvious 
rule of self-protection in civil society empowers it to deal 
with any immorality that may be set up under the shield 
of religion. 

The danger of ultramontane aggression we share with 
all Christian peoples, since the Vatican has committed 
itself to open warfare upon modern society. We cannot 
look to any European nation for a satisfactory solution of 
this conflict. Each nation must meet it in its own way. 
The German method cannot be ours ; but assuredly a re- 
public possesses every right of self-protection that belongs 
to any government. That is no government which cannot 
defend itself and society against all who conspire for its 
overthrow. The Vatican Council has organized the Rom- 
ish hierarchy into a conspiracy against the freedom and 
the sovereignty of civil society. In the United States we 
have nothing to apprehend from the spread of Roman 
Catholicism as a faith, nor from the increase of the Roman- 
Catholic Church. As a faith, as a church, let Romanism 
spread and grow as it may. It shall be defended in every 
right of worship, of conscience, of propagandism ; and it 
must be defended in these, or our religious libeiiTy is gone. 
If it has errors, let truth dispute them ; if it has supersti- 
tions, let light scatter them. Against these, freedom is 
our defence. The century shows us that Romanism has 
not gained relatively in its hold upon the American peo- 
ple. The prophecy so often heard in Europe, that we shall 
be swallowed up by Catholicism, is but another illustration 
how the sea breeds monsters to those who know it only by 
the story of Sindbad the sailor. There is always a sea- 



292 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

serpent to be seen by those who very much wish to see 
one, and keep a constant lookout through colored glasses. 
As compared with itself, the Roman-Catholic Church has 
increased sensibly and largely in the last two decades ; 
but the ratio of its increase to other religious bodies and 
to the population is by no means so great. Here are the 



figures : — 












1S50. 


1870. 


Parishes 


, R. C, 


1,222. 


4,127. 


a 


All others, 


30,830. 


68,332. 


Sittings, 


R. C, 


007.863. 


1,990,514. 


(< 


All others, 


13.500.052. 


19,674 5 1s. 


Church 


Property, R. C, $9,256,758. 


$00,085,500. 


" 


All others, 


$78,072,013. 


$203,108,015. 



In percentage, the gain of the Roman-Catholic body 
upon itself runs higher than the gain of other bodies upon 
themselves; but percentage is of course higher where the 
figures are low. As to numbers, the increase of the Ro- 
man Catholics runs parallel with immigration, which has 
now reached its maximum; and as to property, theirs is 
largely in great cities, where property reached fanciful 
prices during the war. A map given in connection with 
the last census shows how narrow is the belt of Roman- 
Catholic influence over the whole population above ten 
years of age. As a church, the Roman-Catholic is not 
gaining upon the body of the American people ; and, if 
it were, let it do so by all lawful means. America wants 
no anti-Popery crusade, no Protestant war-cry, above all, 
no secret organization, to counteract the Jesuits by imitat- 
ing their odious practice of mining in the dark. Light, air, 
an open field, fair play. — this is all that should be asked 
or granted in a contest of faiths or religions. If Prot- 
estants should seek for more, they would be enemies of 
religious liberty. But on the political side the Romish 
hierarchy require to be watched, and summarily checked 
in any attempt to pervert the government of the country, 
or any of its institutions, to ecclesiastical control. The 
decrees of the Vatican Council, and especially the defini- 
tion of Papal infallibility thenceforth made obligatory as 
an article of faith, have clothed the Pope with a power 
more absolute than any of his predecessors ever had within 



PERILS, DUTIES, ETC., OF THE OPENING CENTURY. 293 

tlie cliurcli, and given him an enginery more potent than 
the armies and allies of his predecessors against the move- 
ments of free society. Vaticanism has practically Jesuit- 
ized the entire Romish, hierarchy by subjecting its every 
member to the personal will of the Pope, beyond interven- 
tion of prince or council. That hierarchy is now a stand- 
ing army always under drill and mobilized, and doing, in 
time of peace, that which modern civilization has pro- 
nounced nefarious in time of war. Such a body may 
become dangerous to liberty in the United States by 
directing voters in its own interest, and by bargaining with 
politicians for concessions to ecclesiastical control in civil 
affairs. Just now it is making a strong effort to win over 
the freedmen of the South. There is that in the pomps 
and ceremonies of the Roman-Catholic Church which 
appeals to the negro's fondness for display, and there is 
that in its mysteries which appeals to the superstitious 
element in his nature. Moreover^ the practical equality 
that this church admits among worshippers, veiling its 
despotism over conscience through the confessional, may 
lure the ignorant freedman with the fancy that he is pro- 
tecting his own liberties by voting for the aggrandizement 
of the church. It would be a new danger to liberty if 
the Romish hierarchy should find in the negro population 
of the South a constituency as pliant as the Irish immi- 
gration in the North and West. 

This danger is to be met, first, by education, and espe- 
cially by a voluntary religious education that shall ac- 
quaint the freedman with the bearing of Vaticanism upon 
his liberty of conscience and of thought, and at the same 
time shall satisfy the religious sensibilities and affections 
of his nature ; and, next, it must be met by such a prac- 
tical exhibition of justice and equality on the part of other 
confessions as shall assure him that he has no need to look 
to Rome for recognition as a man. It would be a lasting 
shame to the religious bodies that have had the negro, 
when a slave, in their fellowship, if, by any lack of sympa- 
thy with his elevation as a freedman, they should leave 
him to become the prey of priestcraft. 

But the more pressing danger from the Roman hie- 
rarchy is through its alliance with political demagogues, 



294 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

who, as a consideration for the political support of their 
church, will concede to this privileges contrary to the 
Constitution, and perilous to freedom. 1 In many cities, 
and in some States, this hierarchy, with, its unquestioning 
adherents, holds the balance of political power. It is com- 
pact, organized, unified, persistent, and always ready for 
action; and such a bod} r , controlling votes, can make 
terms with politicians, unless public sentiment shall warn 
these that they are watched, and shall get their due. 

That the American people will maintain their liberty 
and union at whatever cost of treasure and blood, they 
have fully shown in the war of Independence and the 
war for the Constitution ; and not onty is the patriotism of 
the past secure, but it secures the future also. I am sure 
my own feeling is the feeling of all Americans who have 
had like experience, — that which our grandsires fought 
for a hundred years ago, that which our fathers fought for 
sixty years ago, that which we and our sons fought for 
fifteen years ago, we may trust our cliildrens' children 
to defend. We need not fear to leave to posterity the 
country that three generations have taught them to hal- 
low with blood. Such blood does not run out. No doubt 
the American people will rise up against any usurpation 
of their liberties and rights. But, just because they are 
ready to fight against any real open cneni}-, they are too 
apt to let alone an insidious and encroaching enemy 
until he has gained some formidable vantage. Their mag- 
nanimous confidence in liberty and light, their forbearance 
toward all forms of error and folly, make them unsuspect- 
ing and incredulous as to enemies working in the dark. 
Thus it was that the treason plotted in the Senate of 
the United States, where it might have been throttled, 
was hardly credited until the cannon belched it forth at 
Sumter. 

Now, after this warning, we shall be inexcusable if we 

i For instance, in the contest in Ohio, in 1875. over the perversion of the 
common schools to sectarian ends, a Catholic journal of Cincinnati said, 
" The thousands of Catholics in this city exercising: their rights -of suffrage 
have a very strong claim upon a political party, which it will not he safe 
for political leaders, or aspirants to political office, to ignore or despise." 
But the American people are now awake to the danger of priestly inter- 
ference in pnhlic education, and, by strong constitutional prohibitions, are 
defending the public schools against sectarian control. - 



PERILS, DUTIES, ETC., OF THE OPENING CENTURY. 295 

leave to our successors the risks of a war against the usur- 
pations of the Vatican, when we can forestall those usurpa- 
tions by timely and energetic measures of our own. That 
which makes Ultramontane propagandists a real danger to 
the State is the doctrine that the Pope may order their 
consciences, and of course their actions, upon questions of 
obedience to the civil law ; and hence a power is wielded 
from Rome that may at any time unhinge the allegiance of 
its subjects to the State of which they are citizens. The 
remedy for this mischief is, that the citizen shall be re- 
quired to make his choice between an undivided allegiance 
to the State, as having a complete and undivided sover- 
eignty, or disfranchisement or expatriation. The first con- 
stitution of the State of New York contained a provision, 
that foreigners seeking to be naturalized must " take an 
oath of allegiance to the State, and abjure all allegiance and 
subjection to all and every foreign king, prince, potentate, 
and state, in all matters ecclesiastical as well as civil." 
That provision stood for forty years, and ought to stand 
to-day in every constitution of the Union. 

It was in the spirit of this article that the Protestant- 
Episcopal Church in the United States absolved itself 
from the government and control of the Church of Eng- 
land. In putting forth its " Book of Common Prayer " in 
1789, the convention of that church said, " When, in the 
course of Divine Providence, these American States be- 
came independent with respect to civil government, their 
ecclesiastical independence was necessarily included;" and 
hence the convention had set out to model the church 
and its forms " consistently with the constitution and laws 
of their country." Is there a person in the Episcopal 
Church of to-day who would consent that the church in 
New York, for instance, should again be brought under 
the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Bishop of London, as 
it was before the Revolution ? But the Roman-Catholic 
Church is under the supreme jurisdiction of the Roman 
pontiff, — a jurisdiction which the Vatican decrees have 
now made immediate and final, — above all councils or ap- 
peals. The syllabus denounces the notion that " the Ro- 
man pontiff can and ought to reconcile himself to and agree 
with progress, liberalism, and civilization as lately intro- 



296 CENTEXNIAL OF AMERICAN IXDEPEXDEXCE. 

ducecl ; " and specifically and emphatically condemns the 
doctrine that public schools " should be freed from all 
ecclesiastical authority, government, and interference, and 
subject only to the civil and political power." Suppose, 
now, a collision should arise between the Roman hierarchy 
and the State upon this question of ecclesiastical interfer- 
ence in the schools, and the hierarchy should take the 
ground that allegiance to their ecclesiastical superior at 
Rome obliged them to withstand the school-system that 
the State has established for its own safety and the funda- 
mental well-being of society: could the State allow that 
plea of extra-territorial allegiance, compound its sover- 
eignty for a divided allegiance, or intrust its own adminis- 
tration to hands sworn to obey the mandates of a foreign 
power ? Nay, should not the avowal of such allegiance be 
made a disqualification for the rights of citizenship ? 

The plea that the matters in question are ecclesiasti- 
cal, and the allegiance rendered is an act of conscience, 
has no pertinence in such a case. Any question can be 
made " ecclesiastical ; " and obedience to the State is, or 
ought to be, a matter of " conscience." The ultramon- 
tanes are fond of quoting the saying of Christ, " Render 
unto Ccesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God 
the things that are God's." The} 7- profess allegiance to 
the State "within its sphere," but claim the right to limit 
that sphere by their higher allegiance to the church, 
which in the person of its head, the now infallible Pope, 
is above the civil power, and can define its bounds. But 
this admeasurement of claims between State and Church, 
or the civil and the ecclesiastical powers, was not in the 
contemplation of Christ, and is in no way implied in his 
memorable saying. There stood before him two parties, 
the Pharisees and the Herodians, which, however hostile 
to each other in politics and in dogma, could agree in the 
attempt to entangle Jesus in his talk. Though the Jews 
were held in vassalage by the Romans, the Pharisees 
clung to the proud faith in the Jewish theocracy as above 
all the governments of the earth. In their view, for a Jew 
voluntarily to acknowledge a foreign government, and pay 
tribute to a pagan prince, was treason against Jehovah. 
Though the royal house of David had long ceased to reign, 



PEKILS, DUTIES, ETC., OF THE OPENING CENTUEY. 297 

and the Idumaean Herod had held the throne by favor of 
the Roman emperor, the theocracy was still visibly repre- 
sented in the temple and the hierarchy. The high 'priest 
stood as the head of the nation and the vicegerent of 
God. The Pharisees would pay their temple dues only 
in the old Jewish shekel, and regarded the payment of 
the poll-tax to the agents of the Roman procurator as an 
act of impiety. In the time of Herod, however, there had 
sprung up among the Jews a party who favored some sort 
of compromise with the Roman civil power as a means of 
preserving their own nationality. Herod the Great was 
dead, and Judaea was ruled directly by a governor sent 
from Rome. But Herod Antipas was tetrarch of Galilee ; 
and, while he courted the popular favor of the Jews, he 
sought by flattery and bribes to obtain from Csesar the 
title of king. Those who favored this semi-Roman policy 
were known as Herodians. 

These two parties set out to catch Jesus by asking, " Is 
it lawful to give tribute unto Csesar, or not ? " Should he 
say no, the Herodians would denounce him to the govern- 
ment as teaching sedition ; should he say yes, the Phari- 
sees would denounce him to the people as an advocate of 
their oppressors. He called for a piece of money. They 
had to confess that in every-day life they were using 
money stamped with the " image and superscription of 
Csesar." Then Christ said to them, " Pay that which is 
Caesar's to Csesar, and that which is God's to God ; " and 
both parties were silenced and amazed. 

Just so the ul tramontanes set up their high priest at 
Rome as the incarnation of the theocracy, the head of 
the Christian commonwealth, the vicegerent of God. He 
cannot be a subject, but gives law to princes and govern- 
ments. To recognize any power as superior to him is 
treason against the church, and so against God. Never- 
theless, the Romish hierarchy do not object to having their 
coffers filled with coin stamped with the image and super- 
scription of the princes of this world. Thus far the anal- 
ogy is exact : the modern ultramontane and the Pharisee 
of old are one. 

Now, from the Pharisaic point of view, what should 
have been the antithesis of Christ ? " Render unto Caesar 



298 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

the things that are Csesar's, and unto the high ^>riest the 
things that are the high priest's." Against the visible 
temporal power he should have set off the visible hierar- 
chy as representing the theocracy. He did no such thing. 
The thought of balancing a spiritual power on earth 
against the civil power was not present to his mind, and 
finds no cover in his words. He simply said, " Render 
your visible, 'manifest duty of tribute and allegiance to 
the civil government : but the spiritual life is of the inner 
nature ; this is not an affair of laws and taxes. With full 
heart render to God all that is his." There is not a shadow 
of pretext here for setting up an ecclesiastical authority 
against the State. The fundamental note in Christ's 
teaching was, " My kingdom is not of this world ; " " The 
kingdom of God is within }*ou." Hence he did not set 
up one class of institutions to make war upon another, 
nor to divide with others the homage and service of man- 
kind. He established an inner law of truth, light, and 
love, that should regulate the conduct of the whole life 
toward God and man. The Christian, therefore, should 
act conscientiously, and, so to speak, religiously, in all that 
he does. He cannot go against his conscience. But 
Christ never authorized the setting up of a concrete, or- 
ganized spiritual power or authority on earth, to be pitted 
or paired against the authority of civil government. Not 
Ceesar and the Pope, not the State and the Church, but 
Ccesar and God, was his antithesis. 

A simple example will clear up the confusion that is 
raised by the terms " conscience," " religious liberty," &c, 
Avhenever the conspiracy of Ultramontanism against the 
State is exposed ; and the example will serve at the same 
time to settle certain, points in the labor-question. 

The proprietor of a shoe-factor}- in Massachusetts noti- 
fied his workmen, that, in the dull state of business, he 
must reduce their wages. He offered to open his books to 
their inspection, and satisfy them that he was making no 
profit. He was unwilling to discharge them, or to run on 
half-time, and agreed to raise their wages as soon as they 
could get more at any like factory. The workmen con- 
sented to his terms, but, a few days after, told him they 
were forbidden by the Crispin Union to work for a re- 



PERILS, DUTIES, ETC., OE THE OPENING CENTURY. 299 

duction. They quit work, and lie procured from another 
source a temporary supply of hands. By and by his work- 
men reported they had the consent of the Union to work 
on his terms, and he took them all back. Some of the 
substitutes had done a style of work with a better fin- 
ish, and the proprietor stipulated for this quality. Again 
the workmen came, and said they were forbidden by the 
Union to do that style of work at such a price. He then 
said, " You have twice broken your contract at the dicta- 
tion of an outside power : I will now employ you only 
from day to day." He sent at once to California, and pro- 
cured a body of Chinese workmen, and then discharged 
the old. Attempts were made to burn the factory, to mob 
the Chinese ; but the law protected both. 

The moral of this is obvious. Each workman was en- 
titled to fair wages, to the best price that his work would 
fetch ; he had a right to fix his own terms ; he had a right 
to combine with his fellow-workmen for a given rate of 
wages ; and they all had a right to quit work if that rate 
was not given. They had a right, also, to join a Union, 
and surrender to this the control of their labor; to give 
up making bargains for themselves, and agree to obey the 
rules and terms of a body outside of themselves, and whose 
head was in another town a hundred miles away. 

But what of the proprietor ? He had a friendly interest 
in the men who had worked for him for years, and who 
lived as neighbors in the same town. This interest he 
showed by his several proposals. He addressed himself to 
their reason and their sense of honor, and was successful. 
So long as he could deal with them as individuals, or col- 
lectively as his workmen, he had no trouble : he was a 
man dealing with men, and they came to a good under- 
standing. But, in committing themselves to the Union, 
the workmen surrendered their in dividual wills, and merged 
their personality in an outside corporation. That corpo- 
ration the proprietor was not bound to know. To him it 
was a foreign body. It had no personality; no ties of ac- 
quaintance, of neighborhood, of sympathy, of community 
of interest : it was a dictator that came in between him and 
his men to hinder the freedom of their choice, to take away 
their personality, and make it impossible for him to deal 



300 CEXTEXXIAL OF AVLEMCAN INDEPENDENCE. 

with his work-people on the equal basis of man with men. 
They had a right to sell out their personality; but he was 
under no obligation to ratify the sale : and, when their cor- 
poration sought to interfere in his dealing with other per- 
sons, the law was bound to put it down. Just^o every man 
has a right to the free exercise of his conscience. The State 
is bound to see that conscience — that is to say, the facul- 
ty of moral judgment, the inner sense of right and wrong 
— is left absolutely unhindered by law or by force. Every 
man has a right to decide for himself whether any law or 
requirement of the State is to him right or wrong; has the 
right to protest against any law or requirement, to refuse 
to obey it, and take the penalty. Any man has a right to 
consult with others concerning any law or requirement of 
the State, and to join others in protesting against it with 
a sort of collective conscience. The question, however, of 
combining in overt resistance to a law of the State, lies 
beyond the pale of individual conscience, and falls within 
the category of revolution, which, I have shown in the 
Second Lecture, has ethical principles of its own. 

Again : any person has a right to submit the guidance 
of his conscience to another person or power outside of 
himself; to make it a matter of conscience to accept the 
decision of an outward authority as fixing his duty toward 
the State, so that, on the word of command from such 
authority, he shall refuse to obey the State, shall even de- 
nounce and defy the State. All this he has an abstract 
right to do ; but, from the moment he does this, he forfeit* 
all claim on the State to recognize and respect his conscience. 
As the workman, in bringing in a third power to dictate 
to his employer, merged his personality, so this recusant 
citizen merges his conscience in a corporation, a power, an 
authority, the State cannot know nor deal with. As between 
him and the State, his disobedience has lost the dignity and 
sanctity of conscience : he is no longer a distinct personality 
to be considered as to his views and feelings ; he is on a 
strike, at the dictation of his managers. If then he does 
any thing to molest others or to disturb the public peace, if 
he conspires with or for his managers against the State, no 
plea of conscience can shield him from the penalty provided 
for such high crimes and misdemeanors. The machinery of 



PERILS, DUTIES, ETC., OF THE OPENING CENTURY. 301 

conspiracy and rebellion the State is bound to break. There 
can be no fear of a religious war, and no footing for an 
ultramontane conspiracy, if the State will betimes enforce 
undivided allegiance as the basis of civil rights. 1 But one 
more phantom seems to skirt our political horizon, under 
the fitful names of political centralization and Csesarism. 
Of the strife between labor and capital I make no account 
as a special danger to American institutions. This is not 
a product of those institutions, but an importation from 
the Old World. It is not in America, as in Europe, politi- 
cal in its origin, nor socialistic or communistic in its aims. 
In America the working-man uses the machinery of poli- 
tics, and especially uses the pliant and tricky politician, to 
gain his ends ; for, in the United States, the working-man 
is a voter ; but he is also a voter in France, in Germany, 
and, to a growing extent, in England. In America he does 
not, as in Europe, threaten the foundations of society : he 
does not seek to change the form of government, but to 
use legislation more directly for what he conceives to be 
his own advantage. In the United States there are four 
checks upon socialism or communism that well-nigh neu- 
tralize its influence with the masses. The first check is 
in the facility with which any man can change his occupa- 
tion, enter upon any thing for which he is competent, and 
So make his way onward and upward ; and he who has 
taken his first step upward drops his levelling theories be- 
hind him. 

The second check is in the facility with which one can 
procure a piece of land, or a something that he may call 
his own ; and he who has begun to acquire property no 
longer believes in the community of goods. 

The third check is in experience. " A burnt child 
dreads the fire." Now, the working-man has so often 
been used by the politician, and cheated by Unions, 
that he knows "their tricks and their manners," and is 
shy of new-fangled theories for his relief. To-day he is 

1 See Platform at end of the Lecture. 

For a fuller discussion of the relations of the State to religion, see my 
Church and State in the United States. The laws recognize religion as 
under their protection, and tacitly assume the Christian religion to he that 
of the people as a whole; but they do not know a church as a confession, 
a communion, or a worship, hut only as a corporation. 



302 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

called upon to " vote himself a farm ; " to-morrow, to vote 
that a clay has but eight hours ; next day, that the gov- 
ernment shall " move the crops," or print money for him 
by the bushel. But he has seen so many of these bubbles 
burst, that he is chary of investments in soapsuds. Even 
the Grangers are rinding out, that if they combine to 
raise wheat to an artificial price, and, in prospect of this 
fancy price, raise more wheat than the world can consume, 
the world will not buy, and they must drop their price 
below the old average to work the crop off their hands ; 
and also that railways will not transport crops, unless paid 
for it ; and, if railroads do not pay their owners, no more 
will be built. Thus one fallacy after another is set aside 
by the sure working of the laws of trade, just as the tide 
effaces castles and cities that children draw upon the sand. 
True, the element of humbug in human nature is some- 
thing incalculable : and we must make large allowance for 
this in our estimate of a free State in which men can set 
up their humbugs ad libitum. It is with political specula- 
tion in America much as with what is called philosophi- 
cal speculation in some other countries. Every new pro- 
fessor of the art has a patent system for a universe of his 
own, built of the fragments of his predecessors, or evolved 
from the depths of his inner consciousness. Sometimes he 
amazes the crowd as he lifts himself in his balloon so far 
above their vision, till they discover he is not in the 
clouds, but only in a fog ; then a healthy breeze sweeps 
by, and both fog and philosophy are gone. It is this 
healthy breeze of common sense, springing from a free 
press and free discussion, that disperses popular illusions 
in the United States before they have poisoned the air 
with epidemic disease. 

And hence the fourth check upon false theories of soci- 
ety and life in the United States is " the sober second 
thought of the people," their average good sense. A 
fisherman with whom I was accustomed to deal in New 
York used often to argue with me, that no man had a 
right to amass property above his neighbors, but all were 
entitled to an equal share, for which government should 
make a paternal provision. One day I purposely said, 
" This fish is not fresh." — "I assure you," he replied with 



PERILS, DUTIES, ETC., OF THE OPENING CENTURY. 303 

warmth, "it is fresh. I was up at three o'clock this morn- 
ing, and ahead of everybody else at the fishing-smacks : 
so I had the best pick, and I know there is not another 
such lot of fish in New York." — "Then certainly I shall 
not buy of yon ; for I should make myself an enemy of 
society. You had no right to get ahead of other fishmen, 
and to have a better lot at a higher price than theirs. 
You should at once send them some of yours, or govern- 
ment should compel you to share your profits with your 
neighbors." The hearty laugh with which he said, " You 
have me there," exploded his communism ; and I never 
heard of it again. Depend upon it, all such humbugs in 
the United States will be talked down, argued down, and 
finally laughed down. 

There is one spectre that of late has swayed before us 
like the fog-giant of the Alps, — Csesarism. Yet I men- 
tion this only out of respect to Mr. Sumner, who coined 
the term, and rang changes on it to his dying-day. Politi- 
cal centralization and imperial usurpation are impossible 
in the United States, if the people are simply true to the 
practice of local self-government. We have so many local 
centres of government, — town, city, county, state, — that 
no man nor party can rule the country by orders from 
Washington, nor by official machinery worked from Wash- 
ington as its centre. Congress has none of the omnipo- 
tence of the British Parliament over local affairs, the 
President none of the power of the central government at 
Versailles over municipal and communal appointments; 
and, outside the specific list of United-States officials, 
there is no way of getting at these local officers and 
administrations from Washington so as to usurp the 
appointment or control of them. 

The military organization of the country gives no facili- 
ties for centralization or usurpation. The standing army 
is too small to overawe a single section of the country, if 
that section is resolutely organized for resistance ; and it 
cannot be increased, except by vote of the people through 
their representatives. The army is not concentrated in 
Washington : the general holds his office for life, quite 
independent of the President. No man can perpetuate 
himself in office. He may deem himself necessary to the 



304 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

government; but the people have only to vote another 
into his place, and the machinery and materials for usur- 
pation are utterly wanting. Fears of Caesarism and cen- 
tralization are phantoms. One marvels that a statesman 
should be swayed by such morbid fancies, and scare the 
country with such crude alarms. 1 The President can in- 
deed manipulate the civil service to personal ends and to 
the public detriment ; but this abuse is at most short- 
lived in the hands of any one person, and the remedy lies 
in establishing the civil service upon the permanent basis 
of competence and good behavior. 

A party long in the ascendent may seek to monopolize 
power, and to concentrate the whole administration of the 
country in the hands of its own adherents ; but any such 
attempt is sure to provoke re-action, and to return with 
interest upon the heads of its contrivers. Besides, there is 
a sure and practical remedy for this in a system of cumu- 
lative voting, by which party-lines shall be broken, and a 
just representation be secured to the minority in every 
election. Since the majority of to-day may become the 
minority of to-morrow, it is the interest of all parties alike 
to secure themselves from the tyranny of the majority. 
In view of all the evils now enumerated, there remains the 
cheering fact, that the government, while fixed in princi 
pies, is flexible and improvable in forms and methods. 
Nothing should be despaired of that can be improved, and 
that contains within itself provision for its own improve 
ment. The Constitution of the United States, by its 
provision for amendment, invites the people to make ex- 
perience their law. 

And for this there is need of training for the higher 
statesmanship. The breed of politicians has so degenerat 
ed, that the people would have none of them. The wai 
taught us that true generalship lay in the scientific train- 

i This phantom of Mr. Sumner's is offset by the jubilant announcement 
of a member of the British Parliament in 1801, that "the great American 
bubble had burst." Mr. Gladstone, who rebuked that utterance at the 
time, has publicly confessed the error of his own opinion — "' too hastily 
and lightly formed" —that the Union should and would be divided, and 
his "graver error iu declaring this opinion at a time when he held public 
ofhee as a minister of a friendly power." When will statesmen learn not 
to utter crude opinions or flippant judgments? or, rather, when shall 
we have men in public life, who, being statesmen, would be incapable of 
uttering crudities and inanities ? 



PERILS, DUTIES, ETC., OF THE OPEKCSTG CENTURY. 305 

ing of West Point, and our political blunders and failures 
have taught us to look to scientific training for successful 
statesmen. Already the leading universities have estab- 
lished professorships of political science with this end in 
view ; and in a few years more we shall have men whom 
the State more wants for its service than they want office 
of the State. 

But the essence of all improvement, as the ground of all 
hope, lies in the people themselves. The State has need 
of men ; for in the republic only men can make and be 
the State. And here there is hope, in those ethical quali- 
ties of the American people that give to national life the 
natural and providential elements of stability. (1.) Their 
generosity of spirit. America has her full share of mean 
and calculating men : yet, after large experience in my 
own country, I must testify that the meanest men I have 
known in church and in affairs were not of native birth ; 
and, after wide observation in many lands, I do candidly 
believe that my own countrymen have least of the mer- 
cenary spirit. Quick as they are to make money, they 
are as quick to use and give it for worthy and noble 
objects. Eager as they are to get riches, theirs is not the 
greed of gain, nor the lust of hoarding. As a rule in life, 
money is a means, not an end, for enjoyment, for im- 
provement, for beneficence, not for sordid idolatry. The 
richest citizen of the United States had lived a blameless 
and upright life ; had done somewhat for charities, litera- 
ture, and public improvements : but, when he died, the 
entire press, reflecting the spirit of the people, mourned 
that he had so missed the aim of life in not giving more 
in proportion as he had acquired. The Americans honor 
generosity of spirit. (2.) Theirs is also a quick sense of 
justice as between themselves and toward others, — the 
business integrity that is above fraud, the social frankness 
that is above deceit. (3.) The spirit of peace and good- 
will toward mankind, the sentiment of universal brother- 
hood, marks their private intercourse and their public acts. 
And as, perhaps, the spring of all the rest, they have (4) a 
profound susceptibility to religious impressions, and sense 
of religious obligation. I sketch these outlines of charac- 
ter as the ethical ground of stability in the national life. 



306 CENTENNIAL OF AMEBIC AN INDEPENDENCE. 

But the future of the nation lies in the filling out of such 
a character by every man for himself. However dark and 
threatening the evils of the present, I adopt the heroic 
faith and prophetic hope of the noble Queen of Prussia, 
the sainted Luise, in the gloomiest hour of her land : " I 
believe firmly in God and in the moral order of the world. 
. . . Assuredly a better time will come ; but it can only 
become good in the world through the good. . . . Let us 
care only for this, that we with every day become riper 
and better." The stream cannot rise higher than the 
fountain ; and seldom in political life does it rise so high. 
If we would have the republic worthily represent us, we 
must remember that we represent the republic ; that its 
life and character are our own. More and more is there 
need of men whom no office could honor, no position 
elevate, and who, though ready for any service to their 
country, feel that the highest dignity is that of the citizen 
who clothes himself with all virtues, and so represents and 
honors his nation in his own person. The republic is the 
school of manhood. If it does not train men, lift up the 
average man above the average level, and raise the higher 
man to the highest dignity and worth of character, how 
shall it justify its claim to be ? Ah ! should Americans but 
live up to their opportunity, and fill out the ideal of man- 
hood under freedom, there would be no longer care for 
the republic at home, nor criticism of the republic abroad. 
At home, truth, justice, honor, virtue, generosity, magna- 
nimity, culture, would adorn every person, every house, 
every office ; or rather cease to adorn the individual, as 
the common features of the whole. Abroad it would be 
said of such a one, " He is an American : I know it by his 
breadth of view, his liberality of opinion, his generosity of 
spirit, his courtesy of manner, his brotherhood of feeling ; 
by his freedom from prejudice, bigotry, particularism, van- 
ity; by his quiet self-possession, and his respect for others ; 
by the gentleness of his bearing and his speech ; by his 
taste for music and art ; by his sympathy with truth and 
freedom ; by his enthusiasm for humanity, and his rever- 
ent and loving devotion to God." Let our schools and 
churches produce a generation of such men, and especially 
such women, and the future of the republic is sure. 



A PLATFORM FOR THE NEW CENTURY. 3Q7 



A PLATFORM FOR THE NEW CENTURY. 

As a summary of the recommendations of the preceding Lecture, 
and to give them a practical shape, I here reprint an article which I 
furnished to "The Christian Union" of Aug. 18, 1875, as a "Plat- 
form for our Second Century :" — 

In these days of political uncertainty, when parties are dissolving, 
and " independent voters " are floating about, seeking some new line 
of crystallization, it seems open to any one to offer a platform of 
public policy that may serve at least for a basis of speculation. The 
platform which I herewith volunteer has several advantages. First, 
not being framed as a bid for office, nor to obtain the suffrages of any 
party, it declares itself openly and explicitly upon the questions that 
are of real and present interest; secondly, since no one could hope 
just now to be elected to office upon this basis, the acceptance of it 
could not be imputed to any other motives than those of the purest 
patriotism ; thirdly, ten years hence, no one need look for the votes 
of intelligent and conscientious Americans for any place of public 
trust who shall not plant himself squarely upon the principles of this 
platform. 

(1.) Trade. — Trade of every description, domestic or foreign, com- 
mercial, agricultural, manufacturing, carrying, should be entirely free 
to follow its own laws, without interference from government, whether 
for hinderance or for guidance. If, for the ease and convenience of 
raising a revenue by indirect taxation, the government shall impose 
duties upon certain imports, these should be taxed upon precisely the 
same principle as articles of domestic growth or manufacture, — that 
is, as articles which, by their nature or consumption, are likely to 
yield the most revenue with the least inconvenience to the public, — 
and not at all as articles that come into competition with the products 
of domestic labor or skill. Any form of " protective " tariff is false 
in principle, unjust in its application, and ruinous in its effects. 

(2.) Finance. — The only true and safe financial basis for govern- 
ment and people is specie, in such proportion that it serves as the 
circulating medium of commerce, or is faithfully represented by 
paper, which the holder knows to be, at any time, convertible into 
specie at par. The government of the United States in its financial 
policy should aim directly and constantly at a return to specie pay- 
ments : indeed, as often happens at a critical turn of disease, it might 
be best for the patient to take the whole of the bitter potion at a 
single gulp. After a few convulsive contortions, he would recover 
the equilibrium of health. 

(3.) Education. — The German notion, that it belongs to the State 
to provide for the culture and the religion of its citizens, cannot be 
applied to the American system of government. In matters of taste, 
as in matters of conscience, men must be left free for their own 
improvement and development, in so far as they do not trespass upon 
the rights of others, nor threaten the peace and order of society. But 



308 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 

the American system does demand that every man shall be suffi- 
ciently educated for the intelligent discharge of his duties as a citi- 
zen; and this education the State must not only provide, but require 
of every man as a qualification for voting, jury-duty, and the like. As 
this education is indispensable to the safety of the State, every citi- 
zen must be taxed for it, whether he makes personal use of it or not, 
just as he is taxed for the police, firemen, militia, &c. The State 
must prescribe a course of preliminary education, simply and purely 
secular ; and this course should be obligatory as to the fact and matter 
of it, but optional as to the place and method of it; that is to say, 
there should be public shoots for a plain secular education, open to 
all. This same education, or its equivalent, should be obligatory for 
all. ; but it should be at the option of parents to send their children 
to the public school, or have them taught in a private school, or by 
tutors at home. 

The State should be forbidden to provide for religious instruction 
under any form in the public schools, or to make a grant of money to 
any sectarian school, or to aid any religious institution whatsoever, 
either directly by grant of land, money, or credit, or indirectly by 
exemption from taxation. 

(-1.) Suffrage. — Suffrage should be equal and impartial ; that is to 
say, the conditions of suffrage should be alike for all, and fairly 
•within the reach of all. Though the Fourteenth Amendment to the 
Constitution of the United States aims to make each male citizen 
twenty-one years of age a voter, — so far as the United States could 
fix the terms of suffrage, — yet each State should make it a condition 
of voting, that the native citizen shall have received the schooling 
specified in Section 3, and that every citizen of foreign birth shall 
pass a prescribed examination in the English language. It is true, 
that, at first, several States would disfranchise a portion of their citi- 
zens, and thereby lose a )>r<> rata representation in Congress. This, 
however, the plan of obligatory education Mould remedy in one 
generation. And, by the way, the disqualification rule should at 
once be enforced against Massachusetts, Connecticut, and other States 
that already have an educational test. This would satisfy the South 
that the Fourteenth Amendment was not an act of sectional tyranny, 
and would open the eyes of the nation to the egregious stupidity of 
the second clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, against which the 
writer of this platform protested at the time. 

(5.) Races. — The government of the United States, and the several 
State governments, shoul^l know no races as such, but deal with all 
men — Negro, Indian, German, Chinese, Native American — upon the 
basis of equal laws. And as, on the one hand, the Fifteenth Amend- 
ment provides that the right to vote shall not be denied or abridged 
on account of race or color, so, on the other hand, when political 
organizations are formed upon the basis of race, and for the exclusive 
interest of a race, — white, black, German, or Chinese, — the ring- 
leaders of the same should be punished by forfeiture of citizenship 
for a term of years, and the candidates of such "race" party be 
declared ineligible to office. 

(6.) Immigration. — The government of the United States should 



A PLATFORM FOR THE NEW CENTURY. 309 

do nothing to invite or facilitate emigration from foreign countries 
to America, but should leave this to the operation of natural laws. 
Least of all should it interfere with the civil or military laws of other 
countries touching their citizens, so as to tempt these to emigration 
as a relief from obligations at home. The overstocking of the labor 
market, the overcrowding of cities, the increase of strikes and of com- 
munistic demands, are a warning that immigration has been urged 
far beyond the normal condition of demand and supply. 

(7.) Capital and Labor. — Government should in no wise seek to 
regulate by legislation the relations of capital and labor, but, protect- 
ing both alike from violence, should leave them to their own bargains 
in their own way. 

(8.) The Civil Service. — The civil service should be settled upon 
a basis of competitive examination and graded promotion, offices to 
be held during good behavior. 

(9.) Sovereignty. — The sovereignty of the State is supreme and 
indivisible. Whoever, therefore, acknowledges any other organized 
power as superior to the State in claiming or defining his allegiance, 
should be denied the rights of citizenship in the United States and in 
any State thereof. 

The above platform is not put forth with the idea that anybody 
will accept it. Nevertheless, it deals with the questions of the pres- 
ent and the near future ; and whoever has a noble ambition to serve 
his country in public life, will find, ten years hence, that such views as 
these will command the confidence and support of a great body of the 
American people. 



310 CENTENNIAL OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. 



CONGRATULATIONS FROM EUROPEAN SOVEREIGNS. 

Berlin, June 9, 1876. 
William, by the grace of God Emperor of Germany, King of Prussia, 
Sfc., to the President of the United States. 
Great and good Friend, — It has been given you to celebrate 
the hundredth' anniversary of the day when the great nation over 
which you preside took rank among independent States. The in- 
stitutions organized by the founders of the Union, who wisely con- 
sulted the lessons of history with regard to the formation of States, 
have developed beyond all expectation. To be able to congratulate 
you and the American nation upon this occasion is all the more 
pleasing to me, because, since the friendly alliance which my august 
ancestor, now reposing in God, — Frederic II., of glorious memory, — 
concluded with the United States, nothing has troubled the good 
understanding between Germany and America. Their friendship 
has been increased and developed by a growing interchange in every 
branch of commerce and science. That the prosperity of the United 
States and the friendship of the two countries may continue to in- 
crease is my sincere prayer, as it is my firm belief. I beg you to 
receive this fresh assurance of my highest esteem. 

William. 

Ems, June 5, 1870. 
Alexander, by the grace of God Emperor of all the Russias. 

Mr. President, — At a moment when the people of the United 
States celebrate the centennial period of their national existence, I 
desire to express to you the sentiments with which I take part in this 
celebration. The people of the United States may contemplate 
with pride the immense progress which their energy has achieved 
within the period of a century. I especially rejoice, that, during this 
centennial period, the friendly relations between our respective coun- 
tries have never suffered interruption, but, on the contrary, have 
made themselves manifest by proofs of mutual good-will. I there- 
fore cordially congratulate the American people in the person of 
their President ; and I pray that the friendship of the two countries 
may increase with their prosperity. I embrace this occasion to offer 
to you at the same time the assurance of my sincere esteem and of 
my high consideration. 

Alexander. 
To his Excellency Gen. Grant. 

Victor Emanuel II., by the grace of God and the vnll of the nation 
King of Italy, to the President of the United States of America, greet- 
ing. 
My dear and good Friend, — On the day upon which the 
great American Republic celebrates the centennial anniversary of 
its existence, it is our desire to address our congratulations and those 



CENTENNIAL OF AMEKICAN INDEPENDENCE. 2>11 

of our people to you personally, and to the nation over which you 
preside, and which with admirable ability you have succeeded in 
directing to its noble destiny. Neither the distance which separates 
us, nor any difference of race, will ever weaken in us and in our peo- 
ple that firm friendship which unites us with the brave American na- 
tion with which for a hundred years Italy has had relations productive 
of mutual esteem. We are inclined to convey to you these senti- 
ments so much the more readily, because, for the purpose of the more 
worthily celebrating the memorable day by the monster Exhibition 
at Philadelphia, you were pleased to invite to the festival all the na- 
tions of the earth. Accept the assurances of our highest esteem 
and friendship, together with the prayers which we offer to God that 
he may have you, my very dear friend, in his holy keeping. — Given 
at Rome on the 11th of June, 1876. 

Your good friend, 

Victor Emanuel. 
Countersigned, Meligaki. 



312 PUBLISHEKS' NOTE. 



PUBLISHERS' NOTE. 

The preceding pages show the remarkable favor with which 
Dr. Thompson's Lectures were received, and the estimate 
placed upon them by the foremost men and journals in Berlin, 
Dresden, Florence, Paris, and London. 

[From the Berlin " Kunst-Correspondenz " of March 1, 1870.] 

"Dr. Joseph P. Thompson began, on the 21st of February, a course 
of lectures, in English, upon the origin, development, and results of that 
remarkable and unparalleled event in the world's history, the American 
Declaration of Independence. Dr. Thompson is welcomed by crowded 
audiences, composed of American and English residents, and an influen- 
tial and learned German circle, including many members of Parliament. 
The lectures exhibit a fulness and depth of historical study, and are 
rich in philosophical reflections and intellectual comparisons of different 
nations and of the founders of political systems. The lecturer — a 
patriot of the New World in the finest sense of the word — is thoroughly 
penetrated with the historical spirit, and is especially fair toward the rich 
cycle of events in Germany." 

[From the Berlin "Fremdenblatt," Feb. 25, 1876.] 

"Dr. Thompson's lectures are attended by a very numerous and highly 
cultivated audience, including several members of the diplomatic corps, 
university professors, and members of Parliament. The well-known, 
ready, forcible, and clever orator is followed with marked attention." 

[From the Berlin correspondent of the " Weser Zeitung," Bremen.] 

" Sachse's Art Salon, in which these lectures are given, is scarcely able 
to contain the audiences, which are composed of Germans as well as of 
Americans sojourning here. Dr. Thompson, who has an enviable reputa- 
tion as a scholar and as an expounder of the German Church polity, is an 
excellent speaker, a perfect master of his subject, and knows how to 



PUBLISHEES' NOTE. 313 

[From the Berlin " Staats Anzeiger," an official journal, of March 15, 1876.] 

''The famous American scholar now residing here, Dr. Thompson, 
has just closed his course of lectures on the American nation, delivered 
before a large and select audience. In the style of pragmatic history, 
these lectures handled the institution and the philosophical development 
of the United States with interesting points of comparison in the history 
of France, England, and Germany. Dr. Thompson is known to be re- 
markably versed in German and Prussian affairs, which he has made a 
fundamental study. The style and manner in which he handled the his- 
torical development of Germany since the Reformation, the just appre- 
ciation which he awarded to the Prussian form of State life, the high 
tribute that he paid to the royal house that founded the State and had. 
led it on to greatness, evoked the warmest applause of his hearers, at least 
half of whom were Germans. At the close of the lectures, special ac- 
knowledgments and thanks were tendered to Dr. Thompson for the 
highly intellectual tone and the friendly international spirit in which he 
had carried out his historical parallels. It is hoped these most substan- 
tial and instructive lectures will be published." 

[From the "Berlin Post" of March 1, 1876.] 

" Last Wednesday, at the close of a series of lectures on the history 
of the United States, delivered by Dr. Thompson to a numerous and 
applauding audience, Prof. Zumpt arose to thank the orator in the 
following words, which well characterize America's civilization and its 
relations to Germany : — 

'"It seems to me both improper and ungrateful that we who have 
listened to these lectures should silently separate, at the close of the 
course, without expressing our feelings. I therefore venture to propose 
a vote of thanks. 

" ' This vote has a double signification, at least for that portion of the 
ladies and gentlemen here present, who, like myself, are Germans. We 
have been told of the origin of the United States, its development, 
and its hopes for future welfare. America and Germany, although 
taking their origin in opposite elements and having different forms of 
government, have still the same principles, — religious and political free- 
dom. We may, perchance, choose different paths; but the goal is the 
same. 

"'If, during the struggle for independence, some rulers of German 
principalities were base enough to sell their subjects as instruments for 
tyranny, on the other hand we Prussians — nay, we Germans — are 
proud that one of our Great Frederic's best officers fought at Washing- 
ton's side. Light-hearted, like a German soldier, brave, and true to his 
commander, he helped to organize the army of the newly-born republic. 

" ' We are accustomed in Germany to celebrate birthdays ; also, when 



314 PUBLISHERS' NOTE. 

a person has for a number of years held office, we assemble around him 
to wish him a long life and the continuation of his happiness. In the 
course of this year the American nation will celebrate its birthday, after 
having gloriously lived through the first century of its existence. A 
hundred years are long for human life : they are but short for that of a 
State. Yes, America is young, very young ; but the more time has she 
to develop, the more can we expect from her, the more can she accom- 
plish for the advancement of humanity and civilization. Now that we 
have heard these six lectures on the birth and growth of this nation, 
how can the purport of our vote of thanks be other than " Long 
live and flourish America " ? 

" ' The second part of our thanks is personal, and refers to Dr. 
Thompson: it is in common to all, both Americans and Germans. Our 
learned and eloquent friend is a warm patriot in the noblest sense of the 
word; but next to his own country, which he naturally prefers to all 
others, Germany is probably that which is dearest to him. He lives 
amongst us, and knows us well : our customs, and ways of thinking, are 
familiar to him. He is also a glowing admirer of those who are at the 
head of our government, of our emperor, and of the whole illustrious 
family of the Hohenzollerns. Dr. Thompson fights like a veteran at our 
side in the war which we wage against religious oppression. Of his lec- 
tures themselves I will say nothing. They are above my praise. Words 
would fail me to value them according to their worth. I will only add, 
that, as to myself, I have listened to them with ever-increasing interest 
and rising admiration. I therefore consider it a duty of simple grati- 
tude openly to express our thanks to Dr. Thompson.' " 

This address was accompanied with a crown of laurel, pre- 
sented by the German ladies who had .attended the course. 
This was bound with the Prussian colors, and bore the motto, — 

"Du gabst so Yiel uns, aus dem Schatze Deines Geistes! 
Doch nicht Verstand allein, die edle Seele sprach aus Dir; 
D'rum sagen wir aus ganzer Seele, Dank dafiir." 

The lecturer having met all the expenses of the course (the 
lectures being free), at the close a handsome testimonial was 
presented to him by the American residents of Berlin "as a 
token of gratitude for the able and impartial manner in which 
he had brought before a German audience a fair picture of 
America and its institutions." 

In Dresden the lectures were given in the commodious rooms 
of the "American Club," which were filled to their utmost 



PUBLISHERS' NOTE. 315 

capacity. At the close of the course the following address was 
made by George Griswold, Esq., president of the club : — 

" On behalf of the club which you have so greatly honored, and of 
the ladies and gentlemen here assembled who have been attentive and 
delighted listeners, I desire to return you heartfelt thanks for your very 
able and eloquent lectures. 

" Especially do we thank you for your disinterested kindness in having 
taught us so much concerning the causes which led the States to separate 
from the mother-country, and concerning the virtues of our forefathers 
who framed and organized the government which has been such a boon 
to mankind, and under which, in so brief a period, the United States of 
America have been enabled to take a foremost stand amongst the most 
enlightened and powerful nations of the world. 

" To you, sir, we are indebted for much valuable historical and political 
knowledge, enlightened ideas of government, and statistical information 
which we could not have acquired or even collated for ourselves, but 
which could not have been imparted in more impressive, eloquent, and 
agreeable language or manner ; and, although in numbers we are less than 
the brilliant and learned assemblies you have so recently addressed at 
Florence and Berlin, be assured that we have not been less attentive, less 
instructed, or less gratified, and that we are not less grateful, than they. 

" Again thanking you for the benefit of your vast researches and of 
your impartial comments on the centennial history of our free institu- 
tions, we bid you God speed in your disinterested, praiseworthy, and 
patriotic endeavors to enlighten your countrymen and the people amongst 
whom they are temporarily sojourning. 

"We wish you health, long life, prosperity, and happiness." 

In Florence, by the generous invitation of the " Circulo 
Filologico," their spacious and elegant hall was placed at the 
disposal of the lecturer. James Jackson Jarves, Esq., the 
well-known art-critic, wrote to " The American Register," 
Paris, " Dr. Thompson's accomplishments as an orator and 
scholar, and his specially patriotic course in Germany as a 
fitting representative of the more serious side of American 
character, are peculiar qualifications for his opportune appear- 
ance at the present moment in Italy as a lecturer ; although it 
is to be regretted that he could not deliver this course in Rome, 
where he would be certain to have an appreciative Italian au- 
dience, in part from the members of Parliament and statesmen 



316 PUBLISHERS* NOTE. 

interested in the science of politics and social problems of the 
period." But Italy was well represented in the brilliant and 
enthusiastic auditory at Florence ; and, at the close of the 
course, Prof. P. Villari, also a member of Parliament, paid 
a most eloquent tribute to the United States, and moved the 
thanks of the assembly to the lecturer "for his appreciative 
recognition of Ital} T in her relations to the progress of liberty, 
learning, and art, as well as for his clear, learned, and impartial 
analysis of American freedom." 

In Paris the following resolutions were adopted, being moved 
b} r Isaac H. Birch, Esq., and supported by Prof. A. V. 
Wittmej'er : — 

"Resolved, That we, citizens of the United States sojourning in Paris, 
have seen with pride and satisfaction that our compatriot, Dr. Joseph P. 
Thompson, has, on many occasions during his residence in Europe, ren- 
dered invaluable service by his able, timely, and patriotic endeavors to 
teach the history, expound the principles, and defend the honor, of the 
institutions and government of the United States, and secure for them 
juster appreciation and a more legitimate influence among European 
nations. 

"Resolved, That in the series of comprehensive, discriminative, in- 
teresting, and impressive addresses upon the origin, principles, progress, 
and probable future of the nation, with which Dr. Thompson has favored 
us, we have discovered fresh proofs of the purity, patriotism, wisdom, 
and statesmanship of the founders of our government; and, while our 
admiration of our country and its institutions has been heightened by 
the history and the vindication to which we have listened, our hearts 
have at the same time been warmed by renewed assurances of their per- 
petuity. 

"Resolved, That with the expression of our high appreciation of his 
good offices, and the hope that his valuable addresses may soon be given 
to the world and come to us again in printed form, we hereby tender to 
Dr. Thompson our warmest thanks. 

"Pabis, May 29, 1876." 

In London the lectures were repeatedly noticed with favor 
by the "Times," "Daily News," "Morning Post," "Adver- 
tiser," " Hour," and other journals. The audience was almost 
exclusively English, and of a highly distinguished and represen- 
tative character. In moving thanks, Dr. Henry Allen said of 



PUBLISHERS' NOTE. 317 

the lecture on the Declaration, " It was as strong as wise and 
good. He had never known more thought and information 
compressed into a single discourse." Henry Richard, Esq., 
M.P., said, "The lecture on the Constitution combined in a 
rare degree a profound political philosophy with a manly elo- 
quence. Pie wished it might be printed, and widely read in 
England." Prof. Legge of Oxford said "his ideas about 
America had, for the first time, gained coherence through these 
lectures. They ought to be published for the million." 



INDEX. 



Abolitionists, 128. 
Absolutism, 142. 
Adams, C. Francis, 98, 99. 
Adams, John, anecdote of, 59. 
" death of, 61. 
" " on corruption, 251, 255. 

" " on revolutioH, 17, 89. 

" " on Samuel Adams, 60. 

" " speech of, 55 note. 

Adams, John Quincy, 198. 
Adams, Samuel, 55. 

" " on Establishment, 96. 

Admiralty, British, 135. 
Alabama, 136 n. 

Amendments, constitutional, 128. 
America, her defence, viii, ix, xi. 

" more a society than a govern- 
ment, x. 
Americanism, native, 287. 
Americans, character of, 305. 

" in Europe, vii, ix. 

Anglo-Saxons, 22. 
Annexation, 177. 
Appeal to the South, 137. 
Arbitration, 240. 
Aristocracy, a guild, 80. 

" Church an, 80. 

" natural, 79, 141. 

Army, Continental, 1, 110. 

" standing, 179, 192. 
Art as culture, 234. 
" in Berlin, 234. 
" in Dresden, 234. 
" in London, 233. 
" ki Paris, 233. 
Assassination of Lincoln, 192. 
Aumale, Due d', 5. 

Bazaine, Marshal, 4. 

Beccaria, 72. 

Bellamy, 230. 

Bell, Independence, 53. 

Benefits of United States, 202. 

Bentham, 72. 

Berlin, character of, 253. 

Bluntschli, 102, 141 n. 

Board of Trade, 39, 40 n. 

Books in America, 39. 

Bordeaux Assembly, 5. 



Border ruffianism, 180. 
Boston, early culture of, 227. 

" evacuation of, 53. 

" merchants of, 239. 

" port bill, 48. 

" tea-party, 47. 
Brougham on Washington, 151. 
Brown, John, 190. 
Bryant, 209. 

Bulgaria, horrors in, 155. 
Bunker Hill, 1, 4, 51. 
Burke on taxation, 19, 28, 99, 100. 

" quoted, 5 n, 6, 16, 17. 
Burr, his treason, 170. 
Bushnell, Horace, 208, 229. 
Buxton, Sir Thomas Fowell, xxiii. 

Caesar and God, 298. 

" his character, 159. 
Caesarism, 163, 301. 
Calhoun, John C, 172, seg. 
California, Chinese in, 282. 
" the story of, 206. 

Calvinism and freedom, 30. 
Capital and labor, 302. 
Carlyle on America, 203. 
Carolina, North, 129, 130. 
Carolina, South, 129, 130, 172. 
Carroll of Carrollton, 56 n. 
Caste, 278. 
Catholicism, 291. 
Centennial, the, viii, ix. 
Centralization, 301. 
Charta, Magna, 80. 
Chinese, 282. 

Christ Church, London, xxiii. 
Christ, doctrine of man, 105. 
Christian progress, 205, 209, 220. 
Church and liberty, 29. 

" Establishment, 94, 96. 
" independence of, 33. 
Churches in New York, 220. 
Cities, evils of, 258. 
Citizenship, obligations of, 288. 
Civilization, effect of, 24, 180. 
Civil service, 199. 

" " Bluntschli on, 274. 

" " in Prussia, 201, 272. 

Clericalism, 230. 

319 



320 



IXDEX. 



Colonies, confederation of, 111. 
" loyalty of, 14. 
" patience of. 46. 
" praised toy the king, 14. 
" statistics of , 5. 
" variety of government. 6. 
" various government of, 27. 
Commons, journals of, 14, seq. 

" votes supplies, 25, seq. 

Communism, 301. 
Confederacy of New England, 7. 
Confederation, 61 . 

failure of, 111. 120. 
" not a constitution, 137. 

" of colonies, 111. 

" rejected, 137. * 

" Swiss, 114. 

Congress, contests in, 198. 

" Continental, 1, 3, 109. 
" weakness of, ill. 
Conscience, rights of, 289, seq. 
Constitution, adoption of. 61, 106, 139. 
" and nation, 161. 

" character of, 103. 

" English, 106. 

" glory of American, 111, 161. 

" preamble of, 138. 

Continental army. L09. 
Convention, Constitutional, 122. 
" character of, 123. 

" wisdom of, 130. 

Copyright, 213. 
Corliss Engine, 195. 
Correspondence, committees of, proposed 

by .Mayhew, 37. 
Corruption in America, 240. 

" in Austria and Italy, 249. 

Cotton-gin, 188. 

Crime, percentage of foreign, 182. 
Cuba. 177. 

Cultivated, guild of the, 80 n. 
Culture, Arnold on, 222. 
" Emerson on, 221. 
" in Germany, 230. 
" true, 224, 230. 

Dana, Richard IE, jun., 48. 
Debt of Revolution, 116. 
Declaration of Independence, 1. 

" effects of, 95, 104. 

" indictment of king in, 93. 

" in Philadelphia, 98. 

" meaning of, Juv, 63. 

" moderation of, 85. 

" not a declaration of war, 1, 10, 

65. 

« of Rights, 3, 10, 53. 

" philosophy of, 66. 

" signers of, 57. 

" syllogism in, 66. 

De Kalb on Continental money, 186. 

•' on Washington, 157 n. 
Demagogism. 142. 
Devonshire, xxv. 
Dickens, Bret Harte on, 211. 

" his mercenary spirit, 216. 
" Macaulay on.' 212 n. 
" on America, 211, 215. 
Douglass, Frederick, 279. 
Died Scott decision, 189. 
Duties of century, 248. 



Education compulsory, 275. 
" in Prussia, 201. 

" in United States, 209. 

Election of President. 145. 
Elector, the Great, 154, 200. 
Emancipation, xxiv. 
Emerson on Boston. 239. 
Emmons, Nathanael, sermons of, 36. 
England in the Rebellion, 135 n. 

" love for, xvii. 

" perils of, 195. 

" separation from, xiv. 
Englisliman, the. in America, 218. 

" the insular, 240. 

Englishmen, liberties of, 2, 101, 102. 
Equality, xx, x\i. 102. 

" French notion of, 68. 

" of men, 66. 

Establishment, 94, 96. 
Ethics in government. 88, 101, 102. 
Eulogy on Lincoln. L93. 
Evans. W. M., 98. 99, 103. 

Federal. United States not, 138. 
Fehrbellin, victory of, 200. 
Filibustering, L78. 
Forms of government, 101. 
Forster, Life of Dickens, 214. 
Fourth of July, celebration of, 105.' 

" '• in London, xiii, xxiii. 

France, a nation, 5. 202. 

" New, ik". a. 

" Revolution in, 88, 106. 
Franklin and Gronville. 

before Parliament, 26, 42, seq. 

" Laboulaye on, kit. 

" letter of. to Quincy, 58. 

" letter of, to Strahan, 58. 

" on Union. Ill, 122. 

" ret inn of. from England, 57. 

" wit of, 55, <d a. 
Fraud in Germany, 250. 

Frederic, 52, 14".. ilS, 151. 
Freedom, ethical. 91. 

" inertia of, 117. 

" spirit of, 118. 
Freeman, Mr. E. A., 23, 106. 
Free trade. 185. 
French egalite, 68. 
war, 14, 44. 
Fugitive slaves, 132. 

Gasparin, Count. 2. 
Generals, United-States, 192. 
Geography of United States. 175. 
George III., character of, 105. 

" indictment of, 94. 

Georgia, 129, 130. 

German ignorance of America, 241. 
German in public schools, 2^4. 
Germans in America. 181, 185, 276. 

" on America. 253, 
Germany, liberty lost in, 24. 

" unity* of, 63, 230. 
Gettvsburg, 191. 
Gladstone^ 12, 304 n. 
Goodyear, 237. 
Government a science, 75. 

" by people, 102. 

" it's object, xiv, 70. 

" local. 22. 4o. 



INDEX. 



321 



Government, Teutonic, 23. 
" Greatest happiness," 72. 

Gieelev, Horace, 125. 

Grenville, 39. 

Grote on Switzerland, 140 n. 

Hall. Rev. Newman, xxiii, xxv. 
Hamilton, Alexander, 108. 

" on finance, 186. 

" " on national govern- 

ment, 118. 
Hampden, John, 20. 
Hancock, John. 54. 

" "• proscribed, 55. 

Happiness an ethical right, 92. 
Harrison, Gen., 187. 
Harte, Bret, 211, 283. 
Hartford Convention, 170. 
Harvard College, great men of, 228. 

'' ■' origin of, 227. 

Hayne, Senator, 171. 
Heroes, true, 152. 

Hohenzollern, house of, 63, 117, 152. 
Hoist, Yon. 12. 
Hooker, Thomas, 101. 
Hope, grounds of, 306. 
Humbugs. 302. 
Hume ©h Puritans, 35. 
Huxley on American museums, 246. 

" on the United States, 194. 
Hyacinthe on America, 219. 

Hfraeombe, xviii. 
Immigration, 180. 

" its benefits and evils, 181. 

Independence, Declaration of. xiv, 1, 10. 

" in Philadelphia. 98. 

" resolution for, 59. 

Independent, The, 128. 
Indian war, 14, 44. 
Individual, 144 n. 
Indulgences, sale of, 20. 
Inertia of freedom, 117. 
International, Christianity more than, 

xxvi. 
Irish in America, 182, 185, 276. 
Iroquois, treaty with, 7. 

Jackson on Bank of United States, 186. 

" on the Union, 172. 
Jannet, C. , on America. 249. 
Jefferson, author of Declaration, 61. 

" death of, 61. 

" false views of, 89. 

" on aristocracy, 79. 

" on government, 77. 

" on jury, 82. 

" on slavery, 95. 

" on suffrage, 74. 

" on the Union, 171. 
Johnson, Andrew. 192. 
John the apostle, 225. 
July 4, celebration of, 98. 

" in London, xiii. 
Jury, trial by, 81, 82. 

Kalb. De, 52. 

Kant on development, 225. 

Kemper, Gov., on the Union, 174. 

Labor question, 282, seq. 



Laboulaye on France and America, 106, 
144?!. 
" on Washington, 108. 

Language, unity in, 284. 
League of colonies, 113. 
Lexington, 1 n. 

battle of, 50. 
Liberty, religious, xvii. 

" " Adams on, 169. 

" " English, 103. 

" " Mill on, 76. 

" " organized, 107. 

Life-boat, 69. 
Lincoln, Abraham, xxiii, 23. 110. 

" ' " as President, 15)0. 

" " assassination of, 192. 

" " eulogy on, 193. 

" " interview with, 126. 

" " on slavery, 190, 199. 

Lincoln Tower, xxiii. 
Long Parliament, 111. 
Louisiana, purchase of, 170. 
Lowell on Burns, 210. 

" on Frederic, 154. 
Loyalty, Sherman on, 153 

" spirit of, 153. 
Luise of Prussia, 306. 
Luther as reformer, 20. 

Macaulay on decav, 160. 

" on Reform Bill, 166. 

" on republicanism, 166. 

Madison, his papers, 123. 

" on confederacy, 116. 

" on slavery, 132. 
Magna Charta, 80. 
Majority, tyranny of, 72. 
Mammonism, 218. 
Manhood, xiii. 137, 306. 
Man in society, 71. 
Manners of early times, 124. 
Mason and Dixon, 172. 
Mason on slavery, 134. 
Material civilization, 203, 205. 
Materialism hinders culture, 22^t. 

" not American, xvii, xxiv. 

' " tyranny of, 69. 

Mayflower, 32. 
Mayhew, Jonathan, 37, seq. 
Mecklenburg Declaration, 59 n. 
Men created equal, 67. 

" rights of, Jefferson on, 77. 
" " Mill on, 76. 

Mercenaries, German, 52. 
Mexico, 177, 188. 
Military occupation, 179. 
Mill, John Stuart, 76. 
Mississippi, the, 170, 175. 
Missouri Compromise, 172, 189. 
Moboeracy, 142. 
Mommsen on Kome, 159, 177. 
Monarchy, predictions of, 62. 
Money, Continental, 186. 
Monroe on confederacy, 120. 
Morier on government, 23 n. 
Mormon isrn, 289. 

Napoleon, xiv, 146, seq. 
Napoleon. Louis, 125. 
Nationalities, foreign, dangers of, 284. 
Nation analyzed, 4. 



322 



INDEX. 



Nation defined, 4, 80 n. 

" France a, 5, 9, 12, 83, 96, 161, 202. 
' " the colonies a, 4. 
Nations mixed in colonies, 34, seq, 
'•Nation, The," 255. 
Native Americans, 180, 183. 
Nativism, 287. 
Negroes as " wards," 278. 

" characteristics of, 276. 
New England, confederacy of, 7. 

" influence of, 218, 229. 

names in, x.xv. 
" spirit of, 143 n, 226. 

News, The Sussex Daily, xix. 
New York, churches in, 221. 
North-west Territory, 134. 
Nullification, 172. 

Oberlin, 278. 
O'Connell, 167. 
Office not a right, 74, 75. 
Ordinance of 1787, 134. 
Otis, James, advises a congress, 8, 16, 37, 
40, 55, 101. 

Paine, Thomas, 60. 
Palfrey, 28 n. 

Parliament, English, rows in, 167. 
" Franklin hefore, 26. 

subservient to George III., 26. 
" the German, 127 n. 

" the Long, 111. 

Party-spirit, 162. 

" in England, 105. 

Patriotism, viii. 
Peace, xviii, xxv. 
People, a, 11 n. 

" government hy, 78, 102, 115. 
Perfection not to be looked for, xv. 
Perils of the century, 248. 
Personality, xiv, xv. 
" Person "in Constitution, 133. 
Philadelphia, convention at, 122. 
•' Declaration in, 98. 

Pilgrims, memorial of, xxv, 31. 
Pius IX., 173. 
Platform, 307. 
Plato on Republic, 248. 
Plymouth, Pilgrims in, xxv, 31. 
Political rights, 75. 
Population of United States, 182. 
Prayer, Book of, l'*».~>. 
Preachers of New England, 35, 101. 
Presbyterians, Washington's reply to, 

150??. 
President, first election of, 145. 
" how elected, 142. 

" making the, 125. 

" powers of, 142. 

" re-election of, 126. 
Press in England, 168. 
Priestley, 72. 

Property suffrage in cities, 258. 
"Protection," xvi. 
Prussia, 149. 

" Crown Prince of, 200. 
" origin of, 200. 
Puritan spirit, 189. 

Qualitative, 141. 
Quantitative, 141. 
Quincy on Adams, 58 w. 



Pace in the United States, Chinese, 282. 
" " " German, 183. 

Lrish, 182. 
" " " native, 183. 

" " " negro, 282. 

Rahel quoted, 251. 
Ranke on the Reformation, 21. 
Rebellion of 1861, 61, 197, 277. 
'• Snays'a, 71, 121. 
" true view of. 277. 
Reconstruction, its blunder, 278. 
Reeleaux, Prof., on German industry, 244. 
" " on the United States, 244. 

Religion and liberty, 29. 
" in America, 220. 
" in colonies, 30, seq., 218. 
Religious liberty, xvii, 289, si-q. 
" " abuses of, 289. 

Representation, slave, 131. 
Republican party, 189. 
Republic, a study, 63. 
Repudiation. 187. 
Resistance, duty of, 86. 
Revolution, American, distinguished from 
French, 2, 87, 111. 
" American, justified, 11. 

" English, *3. 

" French, 145. 

" John Adams on, 17. 

" right of, 84, 86, 100. 

" sources of, 21. 

Revolutionist in Europe, S4. 
Rights, Declaration of, 3, 10. 
" from God, 69. 
" " inalienable," 68. 
" Jefferson on. 77. 
" natural and political, 77. 
Robinson, John, father of liberty, 29, seq. 
Romanism in America, 291. 
Rome, Mommsen on, 159, 177. 
Raskin on corruption, 254. 
Russia, corruption in, 250. 
" expansion of, 177, 201. 

Saturday Review, 13. 
.Schiller on rights, 19. 
Schurz, Carl, 289 k. 
Search, right of, 188. 
Secession, Calhoun on, 173. 

" excluded from Constitution, 140. 
" no right of, 11, 12, 115. 
Sectionalism of slavery, 171. 

" Washington on, 169. 

" Self-evident truths," 63. 
Self-government. 7, 9. 
Sermons of New England, 35. 
Shams, 204. 

Shays's Rebellion. 71, 121. 
Sherman, Gen., 153. 
Sidney, Algernon, 101. 
Signers of "Declaration, 57. 
Simon on France, 143 n 
Slavery, 28. 

" brought in by abolitionists, 128, 

" cause sof rebellion, 197. 

" in representation, 131. 

" Jefferson on, 95. 

" not in Constitution, 128. 

" sectional, 171. 
Slaves, fugitive, 132. 
Slave-trade, 131. 



INDEX. 



323 



Slave-trade, abolished, 135. 
Socialism, 301. 
Society, American, 100. 
" for man, 71. 
" Mill on, 76. 
" rights of, 79. 
" sovereignty, 73. 
Sonderbund, Swiss, 114 n, 140 n. 
South, appeal to, 137. 

" reconstruction of, 197. 
Sovereignty, 72. 

Mill on, 76. 
Spain, 202. 

Speculations in Germany, 250. 
Stamp Act, 13. 

" how resisted, 42. 

" of Leo X., 20, 42. 

" repeal of, 46. 

Standing army, 179, 192. 
Statesmanship, 304. 
State rights, 173. 
Stephens, A. H., on slavery, 197. 

" " on union, 174. 

Steuben, 52. 
Storrs, R. L., 93. 
Suffrage, experience of, 274. 
" in cities, 258. 
" Jefferson on, 74. 
" Mill on, 76. 
" negro, 199. 
" not natural right, 74. 
" restriction of, 271, seq. 
" woman, 259. 
Sumner, Charles, 303. 
Sumner, Prof., on suffrage, 271. 
Sunday in America, 219. 
Supreme Court, 143. 
Surgery, American. 236. 
Surrey Chapel, xxiii, seq. 
Sussex Daily News, xix, seq. 
Switzerland', government of, 114, 140 

" Grote on, 140 n. 

Syllabus, 295. 
Syllogism in Declaration, 66. 

Tacitus on Germans, 22. 

Taf t, Attorney-General, 257 n. 

Tariff, 172. li=5. 

Taxation and representation, 19, 40. 

" Burke on, 19. 

" why resisted, 13, 18. 
Tea-party, Boston, 47. 
Tea tax, 47. 
Tecumseh, 187. 
Territory, North-western, 134. 

" of the United States, 177. 

Tests of government, 162. 
Teutonic race. 22. 
Theology, New-England, 229. 
Thiers oh Napoleon, 157. 
Thought, vitality of, 102. 



Times, London, on the Centenary, xvi, 13, 

50, 160. 
Tocqueville, De, 12, 219, 232. 
Town-meeting, 22. 

" attempt to suppress, 48. 

" described, 27. 

Townshend, 41. 
Trades-unions, 298. 
Tripoli, war with, 187. 
Troops quartered on colonies, 49. 
Tyranny of materialism, 69. 

Ultra niontanism, 230, 291. 
Union, geographical, 175. 

" spirit of, 9, 115. 
United States, area of, 203. 

" benefits of, 202. 

" no failure, xvi, 10. 

Universal suffrage, 272. 
Usurpation of George III., 18. 
" of Parliament, 46. 

Vaticanism, 230. 
Versailles Assembly, 5. 
Veto, President's, 142. 
Vicissitudes of century, 159. 
Virginia, 130. 

Walpole, Horace, 15. 
War, civil, 186. 

" of Independence, 110. 
Wars, how conducted, 192. 

" of United States, 61, 187, seq. 
Washington, xxiii, 3, 52, 53, 108. 
" as general, 149. 

" election of. 145. 

" Farewell Address of, 150. 

" greatness of, 151. 

" his solitary joke, 127. 

" his style, i50. 

" on confederacy, 117, 121. 

" on Constitution, 139. 

" on independence, 109. 

Webster on Adams and Jefferson, 61. 
" on Hartford Convention, 171. 
" on nullification, 172. 
" on territory, 177, 239. 
Westminster Review, mistakes of, 13, 16. 
Whittier, 50. 
Wilberforce, xxiii. 
William, Emperor of Germany, 152. 
Williams, Roger, 290 n. 
Winthrop, R. G, 98. 
Witherspoon, 57 n. 
Woman, influence of, 207. 

" suffrage, 259. 
Wrangel, Marshal, 152. 

Vale College, origin of, 229. 
Yeomanry of New England, 36. 



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